Mario Flores can’t imagine Labor Day falling on a worse date. It’s the first of the month this year—the day rent is due. Mario worries this could be the month his check bounces. 

He lost his job at as a train mechanic at Union Pacific Railroad nearly two years ago and his final unemployment check came in June. 

“I’m looking everywhere, asking friends, family members,” Flores said as he waited outside a Berkeley job center Wednesday. “Next month’s rent, I don’t know how I’m going to do it.” 

Flores’ predicament is not uncommon in Berkeley. According to the State Employment Development Department, 4,530 Berkeley residents will be unemployed this labor day, approximately 300 more than last year.  

In July, Berkeley’s unemployment rate stood at 6.6 percent—third highest among cities in Alameda County behind Oakland at 11 percent and Emeryville at 6.9 percent—and nearly three times higher than in 2000. 

The numbers don’t quite add up to Delfina Geiken, employment programs administrator with Berkeley WorkSource, a job counseling and training center funded by the city and federal grants. 

“They’re missing a lot of people,” she said. “That doesn’t include the folks who are underemployed.” 

She said the job center is averaging over 1,000 visits and about 50 new customers a month, up from about 15 to 25 new customers during the tech boom. 

But what has changed the most Geiken said is not the shear volume of job seekers, but their backgrounds. “All of the job centers are inundated with IT professionals still laid off,” she said. “Three or four years ago folks were looking for entry level jobs, now we are looking at such an array—web designers, engineers.”  

Idell Weydemeyer, an analyst with the EDD, said Berkeley and Alameda County have been hit hard by lost information technology jobs centered in Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville, and hi-tech manufacturing jobs mainly in Oakland and Hayward. 

Comparing Alameda County’s gaudy 7.1 percent unemployment rate to Contra Costa County’s 5.8 percent, Weydemeyer said Alameda put too many of its eggs in one basket. 

“Contra Costa still has steel mills and a refinery, plus they’re building houses like crazy...Alameda was much more into hi-tech,” she said. 

Berkeley, she added, has fared better than Oakland and Emeryville because some of its largest employers, including UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and biotech companies like Bayer, continue to grow. 

Nevertheless, for those without a job, it’s often a long road back to employment.  

According to state figures, 23 percent of unemployment claims in July stretched over 27 weeks—the highest percentage recorded. Last July, 17 percent of claims went beyond 27 weeks and in 2001 only 12 percent lasted that long. 

To get locals back into the job force, Berkeley WorkSource helps job seekers with resumes and interviews, and coordinates job training for applicants who would most benefit from a career change. 

Along with other one-stop job centers in the East Bay, Berkeley participates in programs to help train unemployed workers in growing fields such as nursing, pharmacy, child care and truck driving. 

Their pilot program, First Source, commits Berkeley businesses to hire Berkeley residents in return for relying on the job center to handle recruitment. The center placed 98 workers this past year, up from 57 the previous year. 

For those rendered homeless by the recent downturn, Berkeley non-profits, Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS) and Jobs Consortium offer job training to get people back in the workforce and in homes. 

Jobs Consortium is budgeted to handle about 300 cases per year, but Senior Assistant Manager Claude Everett said that due to the bad economy they served 716 applicants this year. 

The work some job training graduates find, however, is not always enough to pay for rent. 

Joe Villagomez completed a course in short order cooking with BOSS. The agency helped him land part time work making garlic fries at the Oakland Coliseum, but he said so far the job hasn’t been steady enough to get him out of the Berkeley homeless shelter on Center Street. 

Geiken is optimistic that the local economy is turning around. Weydemeyer refuses to prognosticate, by noted that recent predictions of a recovery have not panned out. 

Flores, meanwhile, is desperate for something to turn up. “Right now I’m looking for anything,” he said. “I just want enough for rent. I’ve never been evicted. I’ve never been homeless.”

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

Tibetan Yungdrun Bon Institute Healing Retreat from Fri. through Sun. at the Dzogchen Community West Center, 2748#D Adeline St. For information call 526-2343. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 

Kids’ Summer Jam at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, with great entertainment for the whole family. Free. From 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Black August International Benefit for Haiti at 6 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater, Allston Way and MLK, Jr. Way. Speakers and performers include Amandia Poets, Avotcja and Modupue, Dr. Hatim Bazian, Chrystos, E. W. Wainwright and the African Roots of Jazz, Wanda Sabir, Sundiate Tate, and many, many others. Please bring a package of school supplies to support Haiti’s literacy campaign. 415-391-3844. 

Backyard Graywater Treatment Wetlands The Guerrilla Graywater People present a day-long, hands on workshop on designing and building small-scale graywater treatment wetlands. These systems use recycled materials and simple tools to create small wetlands that treat the water from a sink or shower for use in your garden. You will learn basic plumbing skills, methods of wastewater treatment, what plants to use in different situations, and how to design a graywater treatment wetlands for your home. We will be constructing a small treatment wetlands at a house in North Oakland. Cost is $15-$25, no one turned away for lack of funds. Call for location and more information  

428-2354.  

Alternative Materials: Cob and Strawbale Two natural building methods are currently undergoing renewed popularity. Cob is an ancient technique using a mixture of earth, sand and straw; it requires only simple handtools and can easily be shaped into imaginative structures. Strawbales are highly insulative and create an Old World character of thick walls and deepset windows. Workshop from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. 525-7610.  

Planting for the Shade, a free workshop with Aerin Moore, at 10 a.m. An introduction to a variety of perennials and shrubs that are suitable for varying amounts of shade and those that will extend your shade-garden color through summer and fall. Held at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 520-6927, 654-2484. www.magicgardens.com  

Ernest Callenbach and the Wild Buffalo of Yellowstone. Join author Ernest Callenbach and folks from the Buffalo Field Campaign as they talk about their efforts to protect America's last wild, free-ranging buffalo located in Yellowstone National Park, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. Free. 548-2220 x233. 

Bay Trail Bike Ride Join CESP, Friends of Albany Beach, Friends of 5 Creeks and the Bay Trail in celebrating the recreational opportunities that the newly established Eastshore State Park and the Bay Trail affords. Meet at 10 a.m. at Rydin Rd. near Central Ave. west of I-580, to ride from Albany through Berkeley to Emeryville, stopping to lunch at Dorothy’s Sea Breeze Café. Bring helmets, sunblock and plenty of water. Prepare for variable weather as winds tend to pick up along the shore. For more information, contact Susan Schwartz, 848-9358, or Tina Gerhardt, 848-0800, ext. 313. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31  

Dignity Day at the Berkeley Bowl, a rally in support of workers who are seeking union recognition at 5 p.m. at 2020 Oregon St. For information call Kevin at 499-4694. 

Herb Walk Learn to identify and use many edible and medicinal plants that grow wild in the Bay Area. Meet at noon at the Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail head, below the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens on Centennial Drive. Call for directions. Cost is $6-$25 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. Sponsored by the Pacific School of Herbal Medicine. 845-4028. www.pshm.org 

Tibetan Buddhism, Abbe Blum on “The Tibetan Wheel of Life” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 

Labor Day - Berkeley City Offices Are Closed 

Rainbow Berkeley 5th Annual Brunch, celebrating Berkeley's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans- 

gender, Queer, Intersex, and Questioning (LGBTQI) community. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Hs Lordships Restaurant at the Berkeley Marina. Sponsorship is available at several different levels, call 548-9235 or email RB@tksvc.com. Individual reservations for the brunch are available online at www.eastbayvoice.org/tickets and in person at Boadecia's Books, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington, 559-9184. Tickets will also be available at the door. Suggested donation is $10-$20.  

Back 2 School Youth Jam  

presented by South Berkeley Community Action Team from 1 to 6 p.m. in the Malcolm X School Playground.  

Berkeley Biodiesel Cooper- 

ative Orientation at 7:30 p.m. for those interested in biodiesel. Call for location. 594-4000 ext. 777. biobauerx@hotmail.com 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke Seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672 for information or check our web page, http://home.comcast.net/~teachme99/tildenwalkers.html or email teachme99@comcast.net 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727  

College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Morris Dancing Workshop Learn the basics of an English ritual dance form that predates Shakespeare. Free and open to all. From 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. at Oxford. www.talamasca.com/berkmorris 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 3 

“Of Civil Rights and Wrongs: The Fred Korematsu Story,”  

a documentary, with Fred Korematsu in person, at 5:30 p.m. in Room 2060 of the Valley Life Sciences Building on the UC Campus. Admission is free. Sponsored by the Berkeley Chapter of the ACLU. For information contact ayah@berkeleyaclu.com 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, 

corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets every 1st and 3rd Wednesday at 7:15 a.m. at Hide-A-Way Café, 6430 Telegraph Ave. For information call Fred Garvey, 925-682-1111, ext. 164. 

Amnesty International Berkeley Community Group meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1606 Bonita Ave., at Cedar St. Join fellow human rights activists to help promote social justice one individual at a time. 872-0768. 

South Berkeley Mural Project Community members in South Berkeley are coming together to create a neighborhood mural on the side of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Ashby Ave. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Meetings are held every Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios at 1923 Ashby Ave. For further information on ways to get involved please call 644-2204. 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-5143. 

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop  

in to file complaints, assistance available. For information call 548-0425. 

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 

Organic Farmers’ Market from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Elephant Pharmacy parking lot, 1607 Shattuck Ave., at Cedar. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Café Literario, a free bilingual reading and discussion series focusing on Latin American and Latino literature, at 7:00 pm at the West Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 1125 University Ave, will discuss “El jardín de Neruda: una antología de odas.” Copies of the book may be borrowed from the West Branch. For more information call 981-6270 or 981-6140. 

Lawyers in the Library at  

6 p.m. at the North Branch,  

1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM holds public meetings for all interested people first and third Thursdays, 7 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 595-0190.  

ONGOING  

Vista Community College Program for Adult Education (PACE) Enrollment through Sept. 6. PACE is a college alternative for adults with job and family responsibilities.For information call 981-2864 or 981-2800 or email mclausen@peralta.cc.ca.us  

Free Smoke Detectors UC Berkeley and First Alert, Inc. have donated smoke detectors to be made available to City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications for smoke detectors are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Administration Office located at 2100 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy

CAMEJO FOR GOVERNOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is only one candidate who is offering solutions to the budget crisis and it ain’t the terminator. It's the germinator, Peter Camejo, Green Party candidate for governor. 

The biggest contributing factor to the budget deficit is the current administration’s $32 billion dollar bailout of the energy companies. Instead of giving away taxpayers’ money, Peter Camejo would have used eminent domain to take over plants that were being closed, contributing to the power shortage. He would have also called for a meeting of the pension funds (who own the plants) to remove power company CEOs and replace them with law-abiding citizens. 

Camejo is the only candidate that will end energy deregulation, provide incentives to increase the solar energy output, and initiate growth-based energy conservation. 

The escalation of no-bid contracts to corporate campaign donors has also contributed heavily to the budget deficit. The Oracle debacle is a prime example. They donated $25,000 to Davis’ campaign and received a $95 million dollar software deal from the state. By accepting no other bids for software, the administration paid double the cost (according to a State Auditor Report) at taxpayers’ expense. 

Camejo is the only candidate to call for the public financing of elections to level the playing field between legitimate candidates. This is more than just a fair campaign issue. It is about removing the corrupting influence of money on state spending. 

It is time we stopped auctioning off our future to the highest bidder. Reclaim the Government! Vote Green, Vote Camejo! 

Forrest Hill, Ph.D. 

Oakland  

• 

FANNING THE FLAMES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In sub-Saharan Africa, madmen with machetes are frantically dismembering anyone they can get their hands on. In the Middle East, people (Arabs, Israelis, Americans) entertain themselves by blowing things—and people— up. Across the world, various dictators and torturers maim, mutilate and murder in places we've never even heard of. Several nuclear wars are on the horizon. The annual slaughter of women and children has reached whole new levels. And in nearby Oakland, 75 murders have been committed so far this year.  

Billions of people both at home and abroad are totally convinced that if they just kill enough people their problems will be solved. 

Our world is crying out for honest, wise and brave statesmen to come forth and pour oil on these troubled waters, to lead us away from carnage and violence, to sing to us and to tell us that there IS a better way; that the human race is teachable; that someday we will finally learn that violence always leads to more violence. 

Instead we have some idiot in the White House fanning the flames with a blanket. 

Jane Stillwater 

• 

A FEW KIND WORDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Hi, 

Just wanted to say good job on the new paper. In particular, I enjoy Susan Parker’s column and the Excursions and Berkeley Outdoors pages. 

Thanks! 

A reader 

• 

BERKELEY ROUTE CUTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I recently read your article that I believe incorrectly states that AC Transit does not plan any route cuts in Berkeley (Daily Planet, Aug. 26-28). This morning there were fliers on my bus that, although the HX line in Berkeley was not mentioned at the Aug. 21 meeting, AC Transit does in fact plan to cut the HX line from all of its schedules. The fliers were signed “Alex Byrd,” a member of the driver’s committee. I live in Berkeley near Curtis and Gilman Street, and I ride the HX line to work every single day. This is a very convenient commute, and my bus is so crowded that AC Transit changed it to a double-length bus some time ago. I urge everyone to contact AC Transit and make sure that they keep Berkeley’s bus routes, especially the transbay route HX, in service. 

Luther Miller 

• 

DRIVER CONDUCT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I guess this happens to many people on a daily basis, so I wanted to bring your attention. It is about driver conduct on AC transit buses. 

Most of the drivers are customer friendly and I really appreciate that they maintain this attitude despite the increased pressures placed on them through service cuts and potential layoffs. 

But once in a while I come across drivers that seem to pass on whatever they are frustrated about to boarding passengers. 

Just this morning, I was scolded by a driver for reminding her that there was another person behind me who wanted to get on. The driver had not noticed her and had closed the door. Apparently the driver did not like being told about this and shouted, “You get on the bus! Don’t worry about who wants to get on!” 

This is not the only incident I have experienced or seen where a driver would shout at a passenger for an innocent conduct. 

I wonder whether some frustrated drivers are in turn creating frustrated passengers for the AC Transit. Certainly, this will not help the transit in recovering its customer base. 

Takeshi Akiba 

• 

BERKELEY UNSCATHED? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the story about the upcoming walkout by AC Transit drivers, union president Christine Zook is quoted as saying that Berkeley survived the cuts in service “relatively unscathed.” Depends on where you live. Some of us were plenty scathed. 

My line, number 8, was eliminated. Line 65 was altered to cover some of the route, but it runs once an hour (the 8 ran every 20 minutes morning and evening), and takes four times as long to get from BART to my house. And it’s crowded and frequently late. Last night, for example (Aug. 27), the 5:40 bus came at 6:05 and there was scarcely room for all the passengers.  

This is a mess. We need the 8 line restored, not further cuts. The practical effect of all the cuts will be to force people to drive their cars more, and no one needs that. 

Tom Turner 

• 

RECALL FIASCO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This recall election is about faulty facts; no-bid contracting; partisan conflicts; appointing losing-cronies; jobs; dreadful savings-earnings; passing losses to consumers; stonewalling; high tuitions; weak corporation shareholder laws; deeper debt; excessive red tape; crony-size contributions; fake funding; secrecy, and self-serving deregulation. Thankfully Californians have the final say on the recall. 

This election is non-partisan. There is no party primary election. Hopefully whoever is elected will be making decisions and appointments of citizens, regardless of party affiliation. 

If you will not be a registered voter by Sept. 22, due to youth, religious beliefs, or some other reason, you can still help by assisting others to vote. 

Please include Heather Peters and and Darryl Mobley in your evaluations. Neither appear to be part of any big extremist right-wing conspiracy or other organized power grab. See qualifications and opinions at www.Peters4gov.com and www.voteformobley.com. 

John Bauer 

Martinez 

• 

KENNEDY PROJECT 

This letter was addressed to Land Use Planning Director Mark Rhoades. 

Dear Mr. Rhoades: 

I was one of the neighbors who endured oodles of meetings to create some guidelines enumerated in the University Avenue Strategic Plan, among them a prohibition against buildings which jut out over their footprint. 

The nearly completed Patrick Kennedy building at the corner of University and Acton does just this; it balloons out over the sidewalk in precisely the manner prohibited by the plan. 

Could you please tell me how this came about? 

Carol Denney 

• 

PREDICTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The California Republicans are too stupid to win any more elections in this state. 

The Democrats are too smart. 

If Davis loses, Bustamante will win. 

Schwarzenegger, McClintock and Ueberroth will tear each other to pieces and split the vote. 

The big block votes such as blacks, Hispanics, unions, gays and feminists will never vote Republican. These block Demcrats would vote for Satan rather than any Republican. They hate Republicans. 

The right wing Republicans are stupid to demand their bigotry on abortion, drugs and gay issues. 

Schwarzenegger would win if the other Republicans quit and endorsed him, but they are all too damned stupid. 

Election Day results: Bustamante, 38%; Schwarzenegger, 26%; McClintock, 13% Ueberroth, 7%; Camejo, 6%; Huffington, 3%; all others, 7%. 

Sidney Steinberg 

I am not a member of a satanic cult and I did not kill Laci Peterson.  

I’m not actually accused of killing Laci Peterson and dumping her pregnant body in the Bay as part of a satanic ritual, but close enough. Scott Peterson, her husband, has been charged with the murder. But his defense team has floated the theory that a satanic cult may have murdered Laci Peterson. Its “evidence” for this theory is the paintings of a group of artists collectively known as SNIFF, with which I have been associated for four years. 

For five years, SNIFF has worked in relative anonymity on the Albany Bulb, the tip of a wild and beautiful spit of overgrown landfill that juts out from the east shore of San Francisco Bay, just north of Berkeley. SNIFF artists began by painting on hunks of broken concrete that protrude along the shoreline. When they ran out of concrete, they began a series of paintings on plywood scavenged from the abandoned campsites of a prior generation of homeless squatters. 

Propped up on crude easels constructed of wood that washed up on the beach, the line of paintings now extends a considerable way along the waterfront—a gallery of outsider art without guards, curators or admission fees. 

According to Scott Peterson’s lawyers, the paintings of SNIFF depict “ritualistic killings and occult practices.” That’s ridiculous. Severed heads, yes. Ritual killings no. There’s a painting intended as a warning to vandals who have savaged some of our art, that depicts an executioner chopping off their heads with an ax. There’s a painting of a decapitated saint adrift in a row boat with a naked woman. His head with a halo lies at his feet. In a painting of a boxing gym, some of the boxers have had their heads literally knocked off.  

The Modesto Bee reporter who broke the story informs readers that, “Many of the paintings portray sexual activity, and several show pregnant women.” That’s true. They also show mermaids and volcanoes, carnivals, dancing bears in a circus, a hot tub, a horse race, a rodeo, a man and a woman playing scrabble, a Chinese couple with a net full of red fish, an octopus and a woman in carnal embrace, an exotic garden in which a guy with his back to the viewer is peeing, strange doings in a motel, a cathedral, a donkey cart with an old man traveling through a mountain pass, skyscrapers under construction, an upside-down Trans-America building, a muralized limousine with carousing passengers, a theater with an audience running amuck, the Big Bad Wolf in a convertible with a flame job, carnivorous flowers, a strange last supper without a Christ in which a monkey consoles a despondent guest and a white angel stares vacantly into space, a Halloween party, a pizza parlor, a tattooed lady, and, on the interior of an enormous concrete valve housing, a lascivious heaven and a teeming hell.  

When I first stumbled upon SNIFF’s remarkable paintings at the tip of the old landfill site, I had no idea who did them. I would come back, week after week, and there would always be new work, but it was months before the mystery was solved when I came upon four men, walking up the road, pulling a shopping cart loaded with their paints.  

As I got to know them, they turned out to be as nice a bunch of guys as you could hope to meet. David runs a metal shop. The two Scotts and Bruce work in construction. They and their families have hung out together for years. Their Saturday mornings out on the Bulb are usually social events. Kelli, Bruce’s wife, is a regular, always accompanied by Lola, her diminutive Chihuahua. David often carries out one of his daughters in a red wagon lined with a quilt. Scott’s 3-year-old son will comes out to play in the dirt with his Builder Bob toys. The SNIFFies banter and roughhouse, throw balls for the dogs, argue and paint. Somehow they manage to blend their quite disparate styles, improvising the design without preliminary sketches. I haven’t wanted to horn in on their act, but I helped them build an arch from large Styrofoam blocks that had washed up on the shore during a winter storm. I’ve been sculpting the remaining Styrofoam into monumental figures. I flanked the arch with 15-foot-tall statues of a man and a woman. None of my work has made it into the Scott Peterson file. But I’m definitely a candidate for co-conspirator.  

I am sure that Scott Peterson’s lawyers don’t believe that SNIFF is a satanic cult or has anything to do with Laci Peterson’s murder. If they did they would have sent investigators to meet us, or at least given us a phone call. Their job is to sow doubt in the jury pool. We’re just collateral damage.  

One of the great things about the artwork at the Bulb is the anonymity. But now our extended family has become the center of a tsunami of media attention. People magazine comes out to the Bulb and photographs Scott and Bruce standing in front of the painting of the executioner. Bruce is on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren and MSNBC. “Experts” on the Larry King show speculate on whether he’ll be indicted. A woman at CNN calls to ask me if I’m willing to be on the Wolf Blitzer show. I say yes, but Bruce thinks he should do the interview.  

When the media calls, things tend to fall apart. Some of us duck for cover, others run into the glare of the headlights. One of the artists worries that his daughters will come home asking, “Daddy, are you really a member of a satanic cult.” Bruce and I argue about who’s going to have his moment on national television. 

Why would I even want to be on the Wolf Blitzer show? To be sure I want to fight the defamation, to set the record straight. But much as I would like to think better of myself, I have to admit there is also the desire to be seen, to exist in the minds of multitudes—me and the contestants on the Jerry Springer show. Our reality is not quite real. We think it’s enough, but when the media beckons we run into the headlights.  

Soon it will be over. We will continue going out to the landfall. The fennel is turning brown. The blackberries are ripening. The sun fades SNIFF’s paintings. They paint new ones. Thumbing their nose at the scandalmongers they fill them with playful little devils. Vandals destroy my sculptures. We prop them up again. Time passes. If it has not already, the tabloid media will quickly loose interest. It has the attention span of a spoiled child.  

But the taint of its intrusion lingers, like the smell of skunk. I wonder at its power to swoop down and contaminate my world, while revealing nothing of its truth. An entirely fictional character, “The Terminator” is running for governor of California. The media’s faux reality is triumphant, more real than real. We paint, we sculpt – a rear guard action. Soon we will be abandoned again. Old news. I can’t wait.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 

CHILDREN 

Why Wemberly Worried at 10:30 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

FILM 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” at 7 and 9:25 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenez. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Strictly Skills, a celebration of Hip Hop, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

2 Foot Yard, El Faye at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee Quartet and The Justin  

Morrell Group perform at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Suggested donation $15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at 9:30 p.m. at Down- 

town, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 

649-3810. 

Rhiannon with Bowl Full of Sound, jazz vocal and instrumental ensemble, at 8 p.m.  

at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. 

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mike Silverman, aka That 1 Guy, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck at Allston. 843-8277. 

Allegiance, The Answer, Dead in Hollywood, Physical Challenge, Lahar perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

D’Amphibians, Monkey Knife Fight at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 

FILM 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” at 5 and 8:50 p.m. and “The Merchant of Four Seasons” at 7 p.m at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost 

is $4 members, UC students,  

$5 UC faculty, staff, seniors,  

disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 2 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concerts, with pianist Ivan Ilic playing an all-German program, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Admission by donation, $12 general, $8 students, senoirs, disabled. No one turned away. 549-3864. 

Kotoja performs Afro-Beat at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

African Drum Workshop with Wade Peterson. Beginners from 10 to 11:30 a.m., experienced from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15-$25, and advance registration is encouraged. 533-5111. 

Desoto Reds, Rich McCulley Band, Continuous Peasant at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mystic Roots, Serendipity  

at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

peAktimes, improvisational performance art, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations  

suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Osvaldo Torres, Chilean singer, songwriter and storyteller, in concert at 8 p.m. at 

La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12 in advance, $14 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mimi Fox Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102  

Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Pitch Black, Scurvy Dogs, Deadfall, Desolation, Look Back and Laugh perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour of “Gene(sis)” at 2 p.m. at The Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

FILM 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “The Marriage of Maria Braun”at 5:30 and 7:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Deaf Electric, electronic, turn- 

tablism, experimental music and visuals, at 7 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $6-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

2-on-2 Bboy/Bgirl Battle from 2 to 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Presented by Tomorrow's Children, this fast-paced contest of 2-on-2 bboy and bgirl artists offers a $75 prize for 2-on-2 winners aged 16 years and under, and a $150 prize for 2-on-2 winners 17 years and up. Performers include Sisterz of the Underground, The Greans, MachineGun Funk, and Robot Jones. Judged by Danny-Renegades and Karma-Flexible Flav/Zulu Kings. Cost is $5 for 16 years and under/$7 for 17 years and older. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Tang, The Latrells at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Les Yeux Noirs perform high-energy dance music rooted in Roma traditions, at 7:30 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $14. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

AT THE THEATER 

California Shakespeare Festival runs until October 22. Performances this year will be Julius Caesar, Arms and the Man, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing. Please call for performance dates and times. The Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org  

Impact Theatre, “Impact Briefs 6: Shock and Awe,” an evening of ultra-short comedies, directed by Joy Meads. Runs to Sept. 27, at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid. Tickets are $15, $10 seniors and students. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Josh Kornbluth’s “Love and Taxes,” a tale of falling in love while wrangling with the Kafkaesque IRS. Runs through Sept. 14. Performances Wed. - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 and 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $25-$40, available from 647-2949 or 888-4BRT-TIX. www.zspace.org 

Shotgun Players, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Hare, directed by Patrick Dooley. Runs Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. in John Hinkle Park, until Sept. 14. Show Sept. 13 is at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Free. 704-8210.  

www.shotgunplayers.org 

Berkeley Repertory Theater, “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,” adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. From Sept. 5 to Oct. 5 Call for exact performance times. The Roda Theater, 2016 Addison St. 647-2918. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

EXHIBITIONS  

ACCI Gallery, “Space, Time, and Temperature” ACCI Members Exhibition, with Artists Paula Powers, Susan Putnam, Vee Tuteur, Dorothy Porter, Bill Shin, Vannie Keightley, Olga Segal and Peggy Yendell. Exibition runs Aug. 27 to Sept. 27. Opening Reception on Fri., Sept. 5th from 6 to 8 p.m. Gallery hours are Mon. - Thurs. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1652 Shattuck Ave.  

843-2527. acciart@aol.com, www.accigallery.com 

Bancroft Library, “Towards A Sustainable Earth,” exploring the preservation of the American wilderness, the use of water resources, air quality, species survival, the development of alternative energy resources in urban development, and the cumulative effects of modern life on the environment in California and the American West. Runs Aug 21. - Nov. 21, Gallery hours are Mon. - Fri. 9 a.m - 5 p.m., Sat. 1 - 5 p.m. 642-3781. 

Berkeley Art Center, 19th National Juried Exhibition: “Works on Paper,” runs to Sept. 13. Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park, 1275 Walnut St. Open Wed. - Sun. noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Berkeley Art Museum, Matrix 207: Anne Von Mertens “Suggested North Points,” hand-dyed and hand-stitched quilts, to Sept. 7.  

“Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Gennomics” featuring contemporary artists’ visions of a genetically modified future, August 27 through December 7.  

“Turning Corners,” an exhibition of five centuries of innovative art, through the summer of 2004. The UC Berkeley Art Museum is open Wed. - Sun., 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Admission $8, free to UC staff, faculty and students, and free for the general public the first Thurs. of every month, 2626 Bancroft Way, 642-0808.                   www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Historical Society, “Focus on Berkeley” A photography exhibit by the Berkeley Camera Club, Berkeley High School students and community photographers in celebration of the City’s 125th Anniversary. Runs until Sept. 13. Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. Sponsored by the Berkeley  

Historical Society. 848-0181.  

Berkeley Public Library,  

“The Lighter Side of Crop Circles,” photographs by Ben Ailes. Runs until Aug. 30. First Floor Catalog Lobby, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6100. 

Graduate Theological Union Library, “Hand-crafted Books by Bay Area Artists,” Zea Morwitz, Mary Eubank, Nance O'Banion, Ted Purves, Susanne Cockrell, Karen Sjoholm, and Lisa Kokin. Each book is accompanied by a statement addressing the issues and process involved in the creation of the work. Runs until Sept. 30. Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2541. 

Kala Art Institute, Kala Fellowship Exhibition, Part II Runs until Sept. 6. Call for gallery hours. 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org  

Lawrence Hall of Science, “Lego Ocean Adventure” The underwater world comes to life through role play and hands-on activities. Children learn how people eat, sleep, and work while living underwater as well as how scientists explore the ocean depths using unmanned rovers. Runs until Sept. 7. 

“K'NEXtech” Technology meets your imagination—without stumbling blocks. Construct models from colorful K'NEX pieces, which snap easily together, of whatever you can imagine. Or just examine the amazing K'NEX sculptures built by professional designers all made with more than half a million K'NEX pieces. Runs to Sept. 14. Lawrence Hall of Science is open 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Cost is $8 for adults, $6 for youth 5-18, seniors and disabled, $4 for children 3-4, free for children under 3. Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive, above the UC Campus. 643-5961.  

www.lawrencehallofscience.org 

A New Leaf Gallery/Sculpture Site, “Four Elements of Sculpture: Fire, Air, Water and Earth,” Exhibition runs to August 31. 1286 Gilman St. Call for gallery hours. 527-7621. www.sculpturesite.com 

Red Oak Realty “Mixed Media,” by Stan Whitehead. Exhibition runs through Oct. 23, Mon. - Sat., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 1891 Solano Ave. 527-3387. 

Slater/Marinoff & Co., “All Animal Art” Forty photographers and artists have donated works to help fund the spay-neuter and food costs of the Milo Foundation’s work in finding new homes for abandoned dogs and cats. Exhibition runs until Aug. 31. Hours are Mon. - Sat., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sun., 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1823 Fourth St. 548-2001. 

Sway Gallery, “Secret Summer” paintings, installations, collages, prints, drawings, and mixed media by Nana Hayashi, Greg Moore, Marc Snegg, Gab- 

rielle Wolodarski. Runs to Oct. 5. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. every day. 2569 Telegraph Ave. 489-9054.

Berkeley Police suspect that a South Berkeley daylight shootout Tuesday and North Oakland murder the night before may be connected to a North Oakland—South Berkeley turf battle officers blame for a flurry of daylight shootings earlier this summer. 

“Oakland and Berkeley have been collaborating to share information to see if there are connections,” said BPD Spokesperson Mary Kusmiss. Police so far have found no correlation between the two crimes, she said. 

On Tuesday at 12:32 p.m., a gunman jumped from a car at the intersection of Sacramento and Julia Streets and sprayed a dozen bullets at six men standing on the corner across the street. The six took flight, and when the gunman took flight in the car, a second gunman on the other side of Sacramento Street opened fire on the car, firing six rounds. 

No one was hit during the shootout, but three bullets struck a Julia Street home. 

Police have no suspects. 

The crime came less then a day after the murder of Wayne Camper, 18, who was shot at 58th Street and Shattuck Avenue, a few blocks from his home. 

The back-to-back acts of violence have drawn comparisons to two shootings in June. On June 17, the day after a Berkeley resident was shot multiple times on the 1600 block of Alcatraz Avenue, an Oakland man was shot on the 1600 block of Russell Street. Neither man suffered life-threatening injuries. 

Berkeley police were hesitant to accept claims by Oakland police that those and other shootings in the neighborhoods stemmed from a grudge between rival South Berkeley and North Oakland street factions. 

However, the July 30 arrest of a North Oakland resident in the January murder of 19 year-old South Berkeley resident Ronald Easiley turned up new evidence that a turf battle was ongoing this year, Kusmiss said. 

Witnesses said the scene of Tuesday’s gun battle on the bustling thoroughfare resembled an urban war zone, with passerby’s ducking behind cars to stay out of the fray.  

According to witness reports, the gunman was a passenger in a small, light blue early1990s Honda or Toyota traveling southbound in the inside lane on Sacramento Street. When the car stopped at a pedestrian crosswalk, the gunman leapt out and fired a semi-automatic pistol at six men standing on the corner of Sacramento and Julia Streets. The men scattered as they fled up Julia Street.  

After the gunman emptied his round, he got back in the car when a second gunman fired rounds at the car from outside B-Town Dollar Store on the other side of Sacramento Street. 

Jeanette Johnson was with her two grandsons in the dollar store when the shooting started. “I took my kids and ran to the back of the store for cover. It went on for about two minutes,” she said.  

Berkeley Police responded to Tuesday’s shootout by assigning six additional officers to the neighborhood and stepping up surveillance work. Still some neighbors think the police are not doing enough to squelch the violence. 

“That this is happening in broad daylight shows that there is some type of brazen I-don’t-give-a-s--- attitude,” said Kent Brown, who lives on the 1600 block of Julia Street, one block down from the site of Tuesday’s battle. “If this had happened up in the Hills or in Elmwood I think the response would have been different.” 

David Washington, who has lived for 30 years in the house that was hit by the stray bullets said he wished police would be more aggressive. “I wish the kids would quit gathering. I’d like to see the cops move them along.” 

Kusmiss said that anyone has the right to hang out all day long on a street corner, and that if police didn’t work within the laws they would be vulnerable to civil and criminal liability.

As the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington approached, much was made about Martin King’s dream. The dream, which is but four minutes of a 16-minute address, neatly and conveniently overshadows not only the 12 minutes proceeding, but also the reasons for the event.  

Time has a unique way of altering our understanding of reality. The past 40 years has transformed the March on Washington into homage to Dr. King, but it was much more than that. The March on Washington was the vision of labor leader A. Phillip Randolph, it was born out of the frustration at the grassroots level of the state sanctioned Apartheid in the south, and the Neanderthal pace of the Kennedy Administration to act. 

To understand the dream is to come to terms with 1963 as a defining moment within our nation’s history. Alabama Governor George Wallace began the year with his infamous inaugural address, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Conner, with his police dogs and fire hoses became an international symbol for evil.  

It was the year that NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers was gunned down, four young black girls were killed when a pipe bomb went off before Sunday services, and President Kennedy was assassinated. But somewhere in the midst of the confusion housed in 1963, 250,000 people representing a myriad of races, backgrounds, and ethnicities gathered together, galvanized by what America could be rather than what it had become. 

To understand Dr. King’s dream is to come to terms with how the victims were viewed as the perpetrators. Those who systematically had their human rights denied were the ones the Kennedy Administration feared most as they assembled on the Nation’s Capitol August 28, 1963. Is it not strange to think some 40 years later those who simply wanted America to make good on its promise of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, were also the ones the Kennedy Administration felt would be prone to destructive acts of violence on that day? 

We cannot begin to understand the dreamless we understand how Dr. King answered his four-year-old daughter when she posed the question, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?” Because the key to understanding the dream is to understand what gave rise to the dream. 

I submit that collectively we make a grave historical error in looking at the “dream” from the perspective of a 34-year-old theologian addressing 250,000 in the August humidity provided by a Washington DC afternoon. The elements that gave rise to the dream in 1963, keep it alive some 40 years later. 

The courageous efforts exemplified by those who dared to conduct sit-ins, protest, and march in peaceful, nonviolent defiance became strength to movements around the world. Because in that “dream” was the liberation path of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas, the fatigue of Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, the martyrdom of Emmet Till along with Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. It was student rebellion in Greensboro, Montgomery and Birmingham. It became the perseverance of Nelson Mandela and the inspiration to so many gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. 

The dream of Martin King is to understand in practice the words of James Russell Lowell, “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on throne, yet the scaffold sways the future. And behind the dim unknown stands God that keeps watch over Gods’ own.” 

Denisha M. DeLane, 24 year old resident of Berkeley, is a member of the NAACP National Board of Directors, representing the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and the countries of Japan, and Korea. 

As in many things, California goes its own way in terms of labor union membership, according to a new study released jointly by UC’s Labor Center and Institute for Labor and Employment. While the rest of the country has seen a further decline in union membership and the higher salaries and health care benefits that go with it since 1997, California’s union work force has actually grown slightly in the same time period. Labor union membership peaked in the U.S. in the 50s at about 35 percent of all workers nationwide.  

According to the study, 16 percent of the country and California’s workers were union members in 1997. Today, thanks to an upswing occurring in 2001, 18 percent of the state’s worker s are unionized while only 13 percent of the country’s are. The study cites the strong political influence of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for the uptick in union membership in the state. SEIU, which represents janitors, home health care workers and other service workers, has been highly effective at organizing for new members.  

Another factor contributing to union growth in California is that industrial unions such as the United Auto Workers have not had much of a presence here, so the decline in their membership due to losses in U.S. car manufacturing hasn’t impacted the state as much as, for example, Michigan.  

While the stereotype of the union worker remains a guy in a hard hat, that image is now obsolete, says Ruth Milkman, Director of the UC Institute for Labor and Employment. The California union worker is more likely to be a college-educated woman, in part because the largest segment of union workers in California are teachers—more than 25 percent are in education. 

But, the opportunity to join a union is far more important in determining whether someone does so than their attitude about unions. “It’s not really a matter of preferences,” says Milkman. “You have to have the option.” 

Where most workers don’t have that option is in one of the economy’s growing segments, retail sales. According to UC researchers, retail workers—who are combined with finance, real estate and insurance employees for statistical purposes—make up 27 percent of all employed workers in the state but account for only 11 percent of union membership. 

Unionization has enormous consequence for workers in the private sector, where the institute says unionized employees are 78 percent more likely to have pension plans and 44 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage. 

Health benefits in both the public and private sectors are being steadily eroded by employers who want to increase the cost of premiums and co-payments. Health insurance premiums rose 13 percent in 2002 over the year before, costing California workers more than $400 million last year and precipitating recent strikes by unionized auto mechanics in Contra Costa and San Mateo counties and workers at the C&H Sugar Refinery in Crocket. 

Locally, employees at the Berkeley Bowl are currently attempting to unionize the high-end market but are being met with stiff opposition from store owners who have retained a union-busting law firm to squelch the drive. Berkeley Bowl employees will soon vote on whether to join to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has for many years represented clerks at other area supermarkets such as Andronico’s, Safeway and Albertson’s. 

At other retail stores sprinkled throughout downtown Berkeley there is no union presence, but many workers are eligible for health benefits if they work full-time. 

“I do a lot of interviews and a lot of people do need benefits and they ask us,” says Quentin Moore, manager of Berkeley Hardware on University Avenue. “The first concern is how much? Then they go to the benefits,” says Moore who says that hourly wages are determined by an employees’ experience. All full-time employees receive a Kaiser health benefits package. 

While he’s not looking for anybody at the moment, Moore says today older workers may have an advantage. “Older people want to work. They have bills to pay. Your students just want to have enough money for clothes or food for the week. You got people paying house notes and paying for their kids then you’ll see a little more effort put out.”  

However, Moore notes that having more part-time student employees helps the store’s bottom line since they don’t have to pay for their health benefits. Three years ago the store had six student employees, today there are only three. 

With workers making up half the 6.72 million people without health benefits in California—a rise of 437,000 from last year—legislative solutions are on the horizon, including SB 2. Introduced by powerful State Senate Pro-Tem John Burton, SB 2 would require employers to either offer insurance to workers or pay into a statewide pool that would make health benefits available to employees at an affordable group rate.

The upcoming California gubernatorial recall election (the first ever) has been described as a “circus,” a “farce,” “wacky” and “show business.” More reflective observations have described it as a recall qualified by Republican multimillionaires to set up other Republican multimillionaires as candidates to replace the incumbent, Gray Davis.  

Certainly, this is not the kind of direct democracy to hold incumbents accountable between elections that California Gov. Hiram Johnson had in mind in 1911 when he proudly worked to have the state’s Constitution embrace the initiative, referendum and recall processes. He saw these tools as instruments for an aroused volunteer citizenry, not as mechanisms for wealthy corporate interests or political parties that pay signature-gathering firms to get their agendas on the ballot.  

Nonetheless, the people of California, regardless of their philosophical, partisan or peevish reservations about the Oct. 7 election, can snatch several opportunities from the jaws of a potential debacle.  

First, for two months, Californians can engage in vigorous discussion with one another about the main problems and best solutions affecting their state present and future. The election is headline news! Send small talk for a holiday. It is time for some serious reading, thinking and acting about the governance of California. Result: a more engaged citizenry.  

Second, Californians can sharpen their political strategy skills, much as sports fans delve so profoundly into the strategies between teams, managers and players. For example, how will the backroom handlers of Arnold Schwarzenegger figure out how to shield their candidate’s lack of knowledge about public policies and state governance by presenting him garnished with positive imagery, photo ops, generalities, slogans and smiles? How, in response, are the Davis forces and his Republican competitors going to diminish Schwarzenegger’s front-runner status? Result: a public with a honed awareness of the strategies in play, giving voters better defenses against adept manipulations by the political consulting pros.  

Third, it is an excellent time for people and groups with grievances, successful projects and good ideas to be heard. What are the best ways to deal with energy, public revenues, housing, employment, the environment, transportation, health and other necessities of the state? California is full of wonderful success stories that need visibility. Knowledgeable scholars, civic groups and sustainable businesses need to come forward. If you demand substance — and the print and electronic media, including public airwaves, are open to such information instead of succumbing to personality politics in a circus-like atmosphere—unprecedented depth could be reached in this election.  

Fourth, this recall period offers an excellent opportunity to develop measures of performance expected of your governor. Refined and more expansive expectation levels by voters can change the tone, quality and emphasis of the candidates’ electoral campaigns or expose their vacuousness. Low expectation levels allow politicians to inflate their campaign’s emotional content and escape a fuller accountability when they are in office. Moreover, nothing feeds voter cynicism and withdrawal more than their own low expectation of themselves—that they do not count, that they do not matter. So why vote? A greater civic self-respect would result in higher voter turnout.  

Fifth, one massive obstacle remains unchallenged by the voters. That is big money in elections, corrupting everything it touches. If this recall campaign does nothing but sensitize Californians to indignant action against the commercialization of their public election campaigns (“everything is for sale”), it will be a historic contribution to the state’s future well-being.  

Davis has tried to make an issue out of the $66 million or so that the state will spend to run the election. But what should be front and center in evaluating Davis’ tenure is his notorious, relentless and specific cash-register politics since his first day in office.  

As consumer advocate Harvey Rosenfield pointed out last week in a detailed statement supporting the recall of Davis, Californians have been forced to pay billions of dollars in higher electricity prices, utility company bailouts, HMO price-gouging of patients and many other impositions because Davis asked for and received torrents of dollars from these very corporate interests for his campaign war chest. Public funding of public elections is the best public investment, given the seedy alternatives.  

Californians can now turn themselves into more skilled and demanding voters for this and future elections, if they choose to make the best out of the October recall instead of burlesquing the event.  

The whole world is watching.  

Ralph Nader ran for president in 2000.  

Though Clarence Arceneaux grew up in Texas and lived much of his adult life in El Cerrito, it was Berkeley, the city where he fed the homeless every month for nearly twenty years, that grieved for him Thursday. 

A devoted member of the Church By The Side Of The Road at 2109 Russell St. in Berkeley, the man who would work for days every month preparing food for hundreds died of cancer last week. He was 74. 

Arceneaux was a trained carpenter, but it was cooking that stirred his soul. 

“That was his passion,” said Pamela Calloway who is taking over the charity meals. “Not only did he cook for the homeless but sometimes he’d cook just because. It was a way for him to show his love.” 

On June 29 Berkeley bestowed its gratitude for his service, proclaiming Clarence Arceneaux Day in the city. 

Arceneaux grew up in Baytown, Tex. where barbecues and cajun cooking were king. He served in the Korean War and was decorated with the World War II Victory Medal of Honor.  

When he relocated to El Cerrito in 1974 to get his kids into better schools and be closer to his family, Arceneaux immediately set out to serve the poor. For twelve years he packed lunches for the homeless and delivered them to local parks. 

Then while preparing for Thanksgiving dinner 18 years ago, he decided to expand his mission. 

“He wanted to make sure that when he and the rest of the congregation sat down to eat, they could feel good because everyone had a meal,” Calloway said.  

He cooked for about than 300 people inside the church that Thanksgiving. The dinner went so well, he made it a monthly event. 

Arceneaux put everything he had into the dinners. “He’d spend two days cooking day and night, said his son Victor. “He’d go into his own pocket. He made sure he bought the best of everything.” 

The dinner’s didn’t win him a lot of notoriety, but those who he helped never forgot. “I’m still talking to people who tell me they’ve gone to the feed,” Victor said. 

Arceneaux was as dedicated to his church as he was to the homeless. He fixed and tinkered with much of the building on Russell St. and when he grew too old to undertake big projects, he served as a consultant on church construction. 

Reverend Cheryl Ward, who knew Arceneaux when she was a girl, remembered a soft-spoken man who commanded respect, but wasn’t too set in his ways. 

When Ward was first asked to preach at the church, Arceneaux told her he wasn’t wild about female preachers.  

“On the first Sunday I came to preach, he sat in the back and said ‘You better preach good.’ Afterwards he hit me on the shoulder and said, ‘You done good.’’  

Soon Arceneaux lobbied for her to be named interim preacher and last month he asked her to give his eulogy. 

Church member Marian Bartlow put it best: “God took three little fishes and five loaves of bread and he fed the world. Now he has some help.” 

Arceneaux is survived by his wife of 51 years, Elise Arceneaux; five children; twelve grandchildren; three great grandchildren; as well as five sisters and five brothers.

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, the long recognized community resource founded over 28 years ago by Oakland school teachers is engaged in union busting, disrespect of workers, ignoring its own mission statement and has lost its way. 

For over one year employees have tried many ways to improve conditions at the Depot including many informal and formal attempts to utilize professional mediation to settle problems between workers and management. Issues with management include: Refusal by management to discuss personnel problems, lack of the existence of a grievance procedure, surprising disregard for issues of recycling, and lack of recycling in the store. Other problems include the lack of discussion of environmental issues including safety problems such as toxics materials handling. 

Another major concern is the sudden change from a teamwork way of working to a top down “if you don't like it there's the door” approach. Employees were ignored numerous times. EBD Board of Directors have gone along with management, ignore workers’ concerns and have as far as we know, not set in place a structure for conflict resolution. As of June, the vital and successful educational programs, Project Create and Art in the Heart no longer exist. Why? This is a great loss to our community and its thousands of school children who benefited from these programs for many years. In the last year, more than 25 program and store workers including educational program managers have lost their jobs. The stressful conditions persist.  

The employees at the Depot eventually turned to the Industrial Workers of the World in an effort to organize a union. An election took place in April 2003 and employees voted unanimously (13-0) for the union. Of those 13 only 3 remain as management continues to fire, layoff, and force workers through harassment to quit in disgust and frustration.  

Now, another new batch of workers have been hired to replace the workers who organized a union. We don't blame them for accepting jobs during a union organizing drive. We hope the workers now employed at the Depot will take the time to inform themselves concerning the union drive and also look into the concerns listed above as well as their own. 

The stated mission of the Depot “...is to divert waste materials from landfills and reduce primary source production by collecting and distributing discarded material as low cost supplies and furnishings for the arts, education and households, recreation and social services. Our educational mission is to increase the awareness of school students and the general public concerning satisfaction and environmental benefits gained from creatively reusing industrial, commercial and residential materials. The Depot is a California nonprofit benefit corporation.”  

Perhaps the Board of Directors of the Depot should modify their mission statement to something more in line with their actual practices. The abandonment of their stated mission and their withdrawal of support to the educational programs is appalling. 

We think it is imperative that the board of directors be more open and representative of the community that it serves. It must become a more inclusive and involving organization that can respond to the needs of teachers, artists and the community of the East Bay. Board meetings are closed to the public. This has to change. The East Bay Depot board of directors is mishandling their stewardship of this vital community resource and must be held accountable.  

Respectfully Submitted by Arlene Magarian, Chela Fielding, Daniella Wooton, Emma Spertus, Micah Messenheimer and Thurston Graham on behalf of 33 ex-Depot workers. 

For many school age kids doing math homework—especially without the help of a tutor or parent who knows the material—can be so frustrating that they just give up. Thanks to a new Web site that may be starting to change for Berkeley’s young math-phobes.  

Called Hotmath.com, the website is the brainchild of Chuck Grant, a former computer science professor at Cal and the co-founder of Northstar computers.  

The idea for the website was born three years ago when he found himself volunteering as a math teacher at a continuation school in Orinda.  

“Getting those kids to do homework was impossible,” says Grant. He reasoned that the problem was that his students weren’t making any headway so they just threw in the towel. 

After consulting some friends including Bob Bekes, chairman of the math department at Santa Clara University, Grant decided that what his students needed was an online tutor to help them get their homework problems done. 

Students logging onto Hotmath.com discover not only solutions to many of the math problems they face in class, but hints as well. For instance, for a word problem that asks students to identify the three consecutive odd numbers that add up to 105 the hint they click on defines the word consecutive.  

“They don’t know what consecutive means. It’s a big word. So, the first hint is consecutive means one after the other. For example, 5 and 7 are consecutive odd numbers,” says Grant, 58. “Let the kids get the answers they need that a tutor would give them, that mommy or daddy would give them if they had that available help.” 

According to Grant, a Kensington resident, it’s critical for students’ understanding to have solutions to math problems but most textbooks only give a few. 

“The way the normal math textbook presents the information to describe a concept they give three examples of how to apply it to a problem and then there’s a hundred problems that the teacher selects to assign for homework,” says Grant. 

“Some kids get the idea right away. Some kids get what it’s all about by looking at one of the examples in the book. Some get it by looking at two. Some by three. Books can’t be any bigger and heavier than they are now so the kids that take four or more examples are screwed.” 

Research bears out Grant’s point. In a study from the Texas schools presented on the Hotmath.com Web site, two groups of math students were given the same set of problems. 

One group was just assigned the problems; the other was assigned problems with solutions. Kids given the solutions outperformed the ones “who were just forced to struggle,” says Grant. 

“If a problem is hard and you don’t know how to get started, what do you learn? You learn nothing. If someone shows you how to do it, you learn something.” 

Initially launched as a free advertiser-supported website, Hotmath.com began charging for the service earlier this month in light of the soft market for Internet advertising. 

Over 300 school districts nationwide including Berkeley have signed up and pay $300 to offer it to their students for free. Students not attending a Hotmath.com school can access the Website for an entire school year for $29. By last April, the site was avewraging 150,000 hits per month from students. 

Grant launched the Web site with a combination of donated effort and cash from himself and investors totalling in “the low seven figures.”  

Berkeley schools use the service in conjunction with mathbooks from College Preparatory Mathematics, which pays for Hotmath.com access. The publishing company covers costs of site access for all schools using their textbook. The publisher provides most of the seventh grade through pre-calculus textbooks used in Berkeley. 

When Grant started the website, he and his network of 80 math professors and teacher contributors would give all the answers to problems assigned students.  

They had to rethink their strategy after teachers complained that “you’re making it too easy for them” by offering students all the answers, depriving the kids of the joy of discovery. There was also concern that the site could become a resource for cheaters. Now Hotmath.com displays only the odd numbered problems. 

Although the site grew out of Grant’s concern that underprivileged kids were not getting the math help they needed to succeed, he realizes that those very same students may not have internet access in their homes.  

“Very early on we realized we’re helping the rich kids, when we started this wanting to help the poor kids,” says Grant.  

To counteract the so called “digital divide” between families that are online and those that are not, Grant instructs all teachers to make it clear to students where they can go for free Internet access in their communities. Generally these resources include school computer labs, libraries, YMCAs and other after school programs. Of course, for students in a town as wired as Berkeley Internet access isn’t as grave a concern as it might be elsewhere. 

“I’ll bet every kid in Berkeley who doesn’t have the Internet at home has a friend who does within five houses,” says Grant.

BART trains will be running on a normal Sunday schedule on Labor Day. The Richmond/Fremont, Pittsburg/Bay Point-Millbrae and Dublin/Pleasanton-SFO lines will run at 20-minute intervals beginning at 8 a.m. The BART Administrative offices will be closed. 

BART is also offering transportation to the 138th annual Scottish Gathering and Games this Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 30 and 31, at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. To get there take BART to the Dublin/Pleasanton Station and board a “Wheels” shuttle bus, in service from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with departures from the Dublin/Pleasanton BART Station and the fairgrounds every 30 minutes. The one-way fair is $1.25. 

For additional train and fair information please contact BART at 510-465-BART.  

—Jakob Schiller 

Oakland kicks off the Labor Day weekend with its third annual Art and Soul Festival, headlined this year by music giants Ziggy Marley and Rachelle Ferrell. 

Almost 70,000 people showed up last year and event sponsors expect an even larger turnout this year. 

Marley, the son of reggae legend Bob Marley and a respected reggae artist in his own right, has just released his first solo album Dragonfly, a departure from his traditional reggae style. 

Rachelle Ferrell, a child prodigy educated at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, was recently named the “most accomplished and emotionally devastating vocalist to have emerged thus far this decade” by Billboard magazine. With a six-octave range and a repertoire that includes contemporary, pop, gospel and jazz, both she and Marley promise to be crowd favorites. 

The festival kicks off Saturday with a “Family Day” that will include children’s activities and entertainment as a well as a children’s poetry program sponsored by the Oakland Public library. The poetry event is part of the festival’s Literature Expo that runs throughout the weekend and includes other events such as a performance by Oakland Poetry Slam team coordinator Sonia Whittle. 

Other events include a number of open mics, panels, and art exhibits. Everything except the food is free. 

Events will take place from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. every day on five large stages and on the closed-off streets around City Hall’s Frank Ogawa Plaza. For more information and a full schedule check the Web site at ArtandSoulOakland.com  

—Jakob Schiller

For a handful of Berkeley High School freshmen, the first day of school was the worst of all worlds. These were the students who, for one reason or another, had no class schedule in hand and, therefore, had no idea where they were supposed to be. There’s nothing that makes a freshman stand out so much as being lost. 

8:00 a.m. Crowds of students hang in small knots in the area between the Science Building and the theater, mingling, laughing, hollering, waiting for the first bell of the new school year. Schedules in hand, they already know what they’ll be doing and where they’ll be going. For the upperclassmembers, all of this is old stuff. For the freshmen who went through last week’s orientation, they try hard to appear as if all of this is old stuff to them.  

For freshmen, with no schedules, it’s another story. 

Some fifty of them stand in a line that snakes up the stairs to the doors of the theater. They give out their names to the two women sitting behind card tables. For the lucky students, their schedules are printed out and waiting for them at the tables. For the unlucky, it’s a trip to room H105. 

“Where’s H105?” one of the students asks. 

“It’s in the ‘H’ Building,” an upperclassmember answers, pointing. 

“Where’s the ‘H’ Building?” 

“It’s the one with the ‘H’ on it.” 

“Oh.” 

8:15 a.m. About 20 students sit around the various tables in H105, the College Services Office. Counselors shuttle in and out of a smaller office off the main room, conferring, comparing things on papers. To all inquiries they answer, “Don’t worry. You’ll be all right. Just sit down and hang out for a while. We’ll get to you.” 

The students sit, wait, stare at their backpacks on the desk or roll their palms over pens or pencils. Two or three jot down notes on the first page of newly-bought yellow pads, pads that are empty now, but will soon be filled with notes and homework assignments. A few of the students chat among themselves, but most sit separately, and seem pensive and worried. They’ve spent the summer, probably, preparing for the first day at the big school. It’s like a paratrooper recruit waiting to make the first jump out of an airplane, then being told to wait while the plane circles the jump area one more time. The wait must be agonizing. Let’s just do it. 

A few upperclassmembers wander in to look for a counselor, or else, maybe, just to show off to the new kids that they, at least, know the teachers and counselors and where they’re supposed to be. Hal Thomas, the stocky, bearded Director of On-Campus Suspension, screens them at the door. He seems to have a working relationship with all of the old-timers. 

“Where are you supposed to be first period?” 

“English.” 

“Who’ve you got for English?” 

The student shrugs. 

Thomas gives an amiable smile as he edges the student back out the door. “Better whip out that schedule, then, and check it out, man.” Helping out with freshman registration “just for the day,” his strategy appears to be familiarity and gentle (but pointed) persuasion mixed with a wry humor. He apparently has a reputation among the students, as no upperclassmembers offer him a challenge, and most joke back with him as they pass on information and move on their way. 

He moves on to another student before the first one is out of the doorway. “What’s up?” he says. “Talk to me.” The student talks, explaining his problem, and Thomas gives a quick solution. In between students, he coordinates his efforts with an unseen fellow worker on a walkie-talkie. 

Freshman Counselor Susan Werd, with flowing white hair and sandals, walks in and asks, generally, how many of the students have ever had schedules. Some of the students keep talking, paying her no attention. Werd, who seems generally good-natured, is not amused. 

“When an adult talks,” she says, “you need to be quiet and listen.” 

She doesn’t say it loud, and she doesn’t say it angrily. But something in her voice–honed by years of practice, one supposes–makes the students suddenly be quiet and listen. 

She apologizes to those students who were promised schedules, but hadn’t yet gotten them. “I was here til 9:30 last night,” she says, more than once. “I tried to get them all done, but I just had to go home. We’ll have them for you as soon as we can.” Then she asks, “How many students here originally got their schedules and then lost them?” 

A few raise their hands. 

Werd narrows her eyes. “There’s a penalty for that,” she says. “20 lashes, and you have to pick up all the garbage cans today.” The students exchange nervous glances. None of them are quite sure if she’s kidding. 

While they wait, Thomas takes a seat next to a tall student whose been grumbling the most, trying to ascertain his situation.  

“I went to the theater like they told me, and they didn’t have my schedule, so they sent me here,” the student tells him, more than a little annoyed. “It’s a whole ‘nother waiting process. I ain’t about to do that.” 

Disgusted, he waits until Thomas leaves, and then gets up and exits the room himself, telling noone in particular that he’s going to the bathroom. He doesn’t come back. Another student later reports that he was seen hanging out on Shattuck Avenue. Apparently, he is the only student lost to the process during the entire morning. 

8:30 a.m. The bell on the walk clock rasps out like a car alarm. The students all jump, and some of them giggle nervously. It’s the first time, apparently, they’ve heard the bell at Berkeley High School. 

More students come in the door, taking up all of the available seats around the tables, swelling the numbers to between 35 and 40. Some of them are seniors with no first period class. Tomorrow, they won’t come to school until second period, but today they’ve got to have somewhere to go (the policy of the newly-hired principal, Jim Slemp, is that students must be either in class, on a supervised assignment, or off campus altogether; the operative phrase, apparently, is “no hanging out”). Thomas sends a few of the seniors back out to various locations, cautioning them to not “draw attention to yourself.” The halls, apparently, are swarming with monitors shooing students into classrooms or offices.  

“Why don’t you cruise up to Ms. Cook’s class and see if you’re on her roll, just for ha-ha’s,” he tells one upperclassmember who, at least, has a schedule in hand. “If not, come back here.” To the students who are staying, he tells them to “have a seat, relax, get a book, make yourself at home.” 

They find it difficult to relax. After Thomas walks away leaves, an unsure student leans over to a stray adult sitting at the table next to her and asks, “Do you think they’ll mind if I take one of these books off the shelf and look at it? I’ll put it right back,” she adds, quickly. The adult tells her he doesn’t think that’ll be a problem. 

8:50 a.m. A counselor comes in and asks for any 10th graders who are present. The freshmen look up hopefully, but nobody asks for them. A few put their heads down on the desk, like third graders taking a morning nap. The 10th graders are led out in a group, to some unidentified location. For all the freshmen know, they might be merely going to sit and wait in another office. 

But like moving from the reception area to the examination room at the doctor’s office, only to wait for another half an hour, any movement must seem a step in the right direction, a sign of progress. 

8:55 a.m. Counselors begin pulling out the ninth graders two at a time. On his way out, one of the counselors tells the students, “We’re working on your schedules, and we’ll have all of you in class in a couple of hours.” The remaining students are not quite sure if this is actually true, or if this is merely pacification (it ends up being true). At the side of the room, a senior waiting out first period says drily to another senior, “They do the same thing every year.” Pacify? Make students wait? Mess of schedules? 

Whatever the reference, the other senior nods and seems to know exactly what is meant. 

9:00 a.m. The clock bell rings. The students jump again. 

9:03 a.m. Without explanation, five students who have been sitting together at a central table suddenly stand up and file out the door, smirking at the ones left behind. Those left behind stare after them, sad-faced. 

Thomas comes in again, asking if there are any 10th or 11th graders left. One student gets up, and she’s directed outside. “No more 10th or 11th graders?” Thomas asks again. A student in the back raises his hand. “I’m a sophomore,” he says. It’s hard to read the expression on Thomas’ face. 

Amusement? Resignation? Understanding that no matter how many times you ask a question of students, you’ve always got to ask just one more time? He motions with his hand for the sophomore to follow him outside. 

9:15 a.m. Werd returns and asks if there are any students present who went to King, Willard, or Longfellow Middle Schools. 

One of the seniors raises her hand. “I went to Longfellow,” she says, then adds “Four years ago.” 

Werd looks over, recognizes the senior, and appreciates the joke. “Thank you,” she says, calling the senior’s name. It is a clear lesson to the audience of freshmen. This is not a big, impersonal factory. Among the close to 3,000 students roaming the hallways, there are adults who will take the time to learn your name and know who you are. 

9:20 a.m. Werd comes back in, and is met by a student who left the room earlier and now has returned to use the telephone. He says he’s been told—by someone in authority—that he must go home and return tomorrow at 2 p.m. All he needs is for one of the counselors to inform his parents.  

Werd asks a few questions, and determines that the student was originally issued a schedule, but misplaced it. “The 2 o’clock meeting tomorrow is for students who have never registered at Berkeley High,” she tells him. “You don’t need to go home. Just go and sit down, and we’ll get to you.” 

“But I want to go home,” the student insists, edging towards the door, and freedom. 

He interrupts Werd as she tries to explain the situation to him again, and she stops him. “Don’t roll your eyes at me,” she says. She doesn’t say it angrily, or disrespectfully. Just firm and even, like you’d want school personnel to treat your child. She patiently stares him down, until he stops fidgeting. When he insists, one last time, that he was told to go home by someone in charge, Werd tells him that she’s in charge, and she’s telling him not to go home. “But if you keep giving me attitude,” she suggests, “yes, you can go home, and you won’t have to come back for the rest of the year.” 

Getting the message, finally, the student makes his way back to his seat, a little more meekly than a few minutes before. 

9:30 a.m. The bell barks out again, calling out the change of class.  

The seniors gather their books and file out, on their way to second period. 

None of the handful of remaining freshmen have jumped this time at the sound of the bell. An hour and a half has passed, and on their first day at Berkeley High, they’ve arrived.

“I’m part of the hot water bottle generation,” announces my friend and student, Pansie. She is sitting at the table in the third seat on the right, where she always sits, every Tuesday morning during our Creative Writing class at the North Oakland Senior Center. 

Because she has difficulty walking, she takes a seat as soon as she comes through the door. She pulls a small rolling suitcase behind her, full of photographs, postcards, papers and notebooks. Pansie uses a cane to balance herself. 

When she finally settles down into her chair, she spreads her writing materials in front of her. She has on a straw hat with a pink fabric rose tucked into the brim. Her glasses hang around her neck on a beaded chain. No matter what the temperature, she always wears a crocheted white glove on the hand she writes with. I need to ask her about that sometime. 

But then, there are so many things I want to ask her.  

Today she’s got my attention with the hot water bottle comment. “You don’t even know what a hot water bottle is, do you?” 

I shrug. “I think so,” I answer, but I’m not sure. I vaguely remember a scary reddish rubber implement stuffed behind the towels under the vanity sink of my parents bathroom, but I don’t ever recall seeing it in use.  

“In my day every house had a hot water bottle,” continues Pansie. “And there were attachments so you could turn it into an enema and douche bag.”  

She laughs. “I bet you don’t know what those things are either.” 

Even though I am fifty years old, Pansie treats me as if I am a child just learning about the world. In other circles, with different friends, I feel quite ancient, but Pansie makes me feel like a know-nothing little girl and, in some ways, she’s right. 

Not only are Pansie and I distanced in age by over twenty-five years, but race and class also separate us. When I tell Pansie about my childhood, she clicks her tongue and says, “You were rich, weren’t you?” 

“Middle class,” I answer, but to Pansie that is the same as being wealthy. 

“Tell me more about the hot water-douche bag-enema thing,” I say. I am constantly surprised and delighted with Pansie’s forthrightness. Sometimes I’m unnerved.  

“Well girl,” she says drawing out the “irl” in the word girl so that it has two syllables. “Everybody had one. Everybody!” 

She looks around the table at the other seniors and they all nod in agreement. “And they hung it on a hook on the back of their bathroom door,” she continues.  

“Oh yeah,” say the others. 

“It was always there, in every house, and when you shut the bathroom door it would swing against it.” More heads nod in accord. 

“Sometimes people would cover it with their bathrobes to try to hide it, but that didn’t matter cuz you always knew it was there.” 

“Wow,” I say. “Kind of a personal thing to be hanging out in front of everyone wasn’t it?” 

“You had to hang it up!” she answers, “cuz it was full of water and you needed to let it drain. Otherwise it would rot. Back then nobody could afford to buy a new one. Now people use electric heating pads for their aches and pains and pills when they’re constipated and nobody douches anymore, though in my opinion I think they should.”  

She chuckles. “But nobody cares about that stuff. Only us old folks, the hot water bottle-plus generation.” 

Everybody laughs. “Those were the days,” someone shouts. 

“Yes,” sighs Pansie. “Those were the days. But come on now, you’re the teacher. You got somethin’ for us to learn?” 

There is a twinkle in Pansie’s eyes and I know that she knows that there is really only one person learning in this classroom. That’s me, just a relative youngster from the heating pad, pill-taking, non-douche bag generation.

After more than two years of internal debate and intense pressure from industry, the Bush administration is announcing a new rule that will allow thousands of older power plants, oil refineries, and industrial units to make extensive upgrades without having to install new anti-pollution devices. 

Industry is delighted. 

Environmentalists are furious. 

The original Clean Air Act came out of the Nixon Administration. Later, under Jimmy Carter, it was amended to require that any new power plant or factory be fitted with the latest emissions-control technology. This would cost industry a bundle, but there was a compromise. The requirement only applied to “new” power plants and factories, not ones already in existence in 1977 when the amendment was passed. Those would be exempt. Even if they did routine maintenance and minor upgrading to keep their operations going, owners wouldn’t have to install the latest pollution-control equipment. 

Here’s the problem. Let’s say you own an old power plant. You don’t want to pay for new pollution-control equipment if you can avoid it, right? So you don’t build a new plant. You just keep your old plant running as long as you can, doing routine maintenance and upgrading when needed. A brand new plant might be more efficient. It might actually conserve energy and maybe even reduce pollution. But you’re not going to build it unless it saves you more than the cost of building it and installing the latest pollution controls. 

So now comes the Bush administration and says, don’t worry. We’re going to interpret “routine maintenance” so broadly that you can make your plant practically new, and still not have to install new pollution controls. 

Is this good or bad? In this era of blackouts and dangerous dependence on Mid-East oil, we do need efficiency. So to the extent this new rule encourages owners to modernize old, inefficient power plants and factories, it’s good. On the other hand, in this era of global warming, we need cleaner air. But this new rule widens the loophole that lets owners avoid state-of-the-art pollution controls. So, to this extent, it’s bad. 

The bottom line: We get more efficient power, which may mean a bit less pollution per thermal unit. But we don’t get the cleaner skies we’d get if owners had to use the best pollution-control equipment. 

I’ve got a better idea—and it’s something both the Bush administration and environmentalists might even agree to. Enact a pollution tax, that owners would have to pay according to how much gunk their plants and factories spewed into the air. That way, they’d have an automatic incentive to build more efficient plants and also install the best available pollution-control equipment. 

But don’t hold your breath. 

Or maybe you should, because the air is likely to get a lot dirtier. 

Robert B. Reich served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor during President Clinton’s first term.

My East Coast and out-of-country friends have taken to e-mailing me these days with messages like, “Is there a cloud of odd smelling smoke hovering over your home state?” As they cover the gubernatorial recall, the national news seems to think that “crazy” is our state’s title and “circus” its last name.  

Myself, I have reluctantly but steadily come around to the conclusion that the recall is not quite as unhealthy an exercise as many of my Democratic friends believe.  

The thumbnail history of the recall, from a Democratic perspective, is that the recall is a right-wing attempt to either “hijack” or “buy” the governor’s seat, the two terms being used interchangeably and sometimes in the same sentence. Democratic operatives, high and low, loudly and publicly theorize that this is part of a Republican campaign to “steal” elections that they had already lost, in line with the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton and the Supreme Court appointment of George Bush, the Lesser.  

But this is a cart/horse thing. Yes, the recall effort was started on the right, and only came to an actual election because Republican Congressmember Darrell Issa pumped a million dollars into the petition campaign, hence the “buying” charge. But Issa put money into the recall campaign only after he realized a peculiar fact: A large number of hard-core California Democratic voters indicated just as much disaffection with Sacramento in general and Davis in particular as did their hard-core Republican neighbors.  

This has been a long time building, the creation of a state governmental apparatus that has been growing increasingly more distant from, and less responsive to, its average citizens—and this feeling comes from both ends of the political spectrum, Oakland and Oxnard alike. There have been a number of attempts to reign this unresponsiveness in from both the left and the right, first in the mass demonstrations and street action of the 60s and 70s, later in the passage of such propositions as 13 and term limits, to no apparent avail. The freight train that is state government rumbles on, oblivious, running over all of us here on the ground, liberal and conservative both, if not equally, at least in turn. 

Gray Davis has made his own special contributions to the problem. The first is his almost round-the-clock contribution collection machine, coupled with a propensity to favor the interests of contributors over constituents (see his support for the prison guards while teacher pay falls behind, as well as his vetoes of banking privacy laws as just two of many, many examples). Gray Davis did not invent this practice, but few have done it so brazenly.  

The second was his dithering during the beginning stages of the energy crisis two years ago, coupled with his subsequent signing of the long-term power contracts. Yes, deregulation was conceived and consummated under a Republican governor (Pete Wilson), and the main gouging was done by energy companies friendly to President Bush. But the latter were out of the reach of California voters. Davis was not.  

At least, we thought he wasn’t, until he manipulated the 2002 gubernatorial election. This—not Davis’ bland personality or the state’s alleged nuttiness—is what made the recall go from theory to reality. An election—when it involves real public debate on important issues—is as much a public catharsis as it is a decision-making process, a venting of the public bile, a way of getting things out of our system. Davis aborted all of that. He used his considerable campaign treasury to knock the one candidate out of the Republican primary who might have made a decent conversation of last year’s election—Richard Riordan—and then turned the fall election into a “yeah, I’m a son-of-a-bitch, but I’m not as sorry a son-of-bitch as that bastard I maneuvered the Republicans into running against me” contest. Californians didn’t like the choices given. 

I didn’t support the recall last winter when they were gathering signatures in the shopping malls, but I must say that I am duly pleased with some of the results. It is immensely satisfying, now that he suddenly needs us, to see the haughty and distant Gray Davis have to squirm and come out of his office, discovering his constituent base. I like to be pandered to, every now and then. 

And so, like the elderly man at the AC Transit stop, the recall allows us to flail away with our cane at the passing bus of state. Crazy? Maybe. We risk getting ourselves dragged under the wheels. But these days, that seems to be the only way to get state government to slow its roll and pay us some attention, if only for a fleeting moment. Thank you for that, my Republican friends.

Talk about recall circuses. The Big Tent went up Tuesday night at UCLA and Governor Gray Davis rolled out his anti-recall campaign by reminding us at least 10 times that he’s coming out fighting—fighting for me! For you! The people! For all of California! Our future! Against the right-wing!  

And mostly to save his collapsing career.  

Davis reminded us that he is the “education governor” but none of the university’s students were allowed in. The Ackerman ballroom can hold 2,000 people, but Davis’ staff had partitioned off the front quadrant and limited the audience to only 250 handpicked guests. In the best traditions of the corrupt Mexican political party, the PRI, most of those attending were brightly T-shirted union members, herded in by their leaders to applaud the governor on cue. A cynical and sad manipulation of organized labor. 

You can’t blame Davis, though. With UC fees rising 35 percent and community college tariffs going up more than 50 percent, I doubt the Guv would have gotten much of a warm welcome from the student body. Or from the general public for that matter, considering that 60 percent or so of the electorate is leaning toward firing him.  

Cheap theatrics aside, Davis did himself no good. Portraying himself as a victim, as he did, will win little support. First you have to be popular before voters are ready to feel sorry for you. Ask Bill Clinton.  

Robotically gesturing with his hands—as he surely rehearsed it all day in front of a mirror—he branded the recall a “right-wing power grab,” part of “an ongoing national effort to steal elections that Republicans cannot win.”  

Poppycock.  

The recall, clunky as it is, tainted as its partisan origins might be, is nothing but an old-fashioned vote of confidence—one that any electorate has the right to, and one that Davis is set to lose. The only election-stealing going on is the attempt by Democratic satellite groups to have the courts postpone an election that 75 percent or more of voters say they want.  

Davis did make a few tepid attempts to explain away his glaring failures. Assuming that none of us has a memory beyond last week, he argued that he had merely inherited the deregulation scheme that put us all at the mercy of the energy providers. But Davis was the sitting lieutenant governor when deregulation was adopted in 1996 and there’s no record of as much as a contrary hiccup coming from him at the time. Indeed, two years later when consumer-backed Prop. 9 aimed at reversing much of the deregulation fiasco, Gray Davis, allied with the utility monopolies, signed the ballot statement opposing the measure.  

Once the power shortage hit in late 2000, Davis as governor was irresponsibly slow to respond, no doubt distracted by his voracious fund-raising. He threatened to seize the power grid, but that bold position soon melted into conciliation with the energy behemoths, at one point Davis employing the same spinmeisters that that were in the pay of Edison. Remember Lehane and Fabiani?  

The result? Weighing down the state with over-priced long-term energy contracts, Davis thereby contributed maybe as much as $10 billion to the deficit black hole.  

And on what other issue dear to Democrats has the governor provided leadership? According to Davis, he’s the last thin line of defense against a Republican putsch. But the cold facts are that Davis, last year alone, vetoed more than 250 bills coming out of the Democratic legislature. Davis is the real Terminator, having nixed during his tenure:  

• A simple review of the inhuman and costly three-strikes law 

• The creation of a state office on homelessness that would cost a mere $500,000  

• Expansion of medical services for low-income Californians 

• A bill to establish a clean-needle distribution program 

• A bill to research use of industrial hemp 

• The driver’s license bill for the undocumented that he now opportunistically supports 

• A racial-tracking bill aimed at curbing discrimination in business and unions 

In criminal justice matters, Davis has actually been worse than Pete Wilson, allowing virtually no prisoner to be released on parole. The governor fought, unsuccessfully, the voter-approved Prop. 36 which substitutes treatment for jail for nonviolent offenders. He supported Prop. 21, making it easier to criminalize youthful petty offenders. And Davis has been a zealous enforcer of the death penalty.  

His pandering to the reactionary prison guards’ union surpasses that of his GOP predecessor. In the midst of the state’s collapsing finances, the almighty guards are raking in a 7% salary increase this year, unprecedented raises in pensions, and Club Med-class work rules which have generated mind-boggling amounts of paid sick time for our legion of prison screws.  

Meanwhile, the $5-billion-a-year Indian casino industry, recipient of sweetheart compacts signed by Gray, pays no gaming tax to the state. Even the Vegas casinos have to cough up 7% to Nevada.  

During his UCLA speech Davis claimed that the $3 million spent to qualify the recall was a waste “that could be better spent on something else—like education.” Yet Davis responded to an ACLU lawsuit charging him with providing dilapidated public schools to the poor by squandering $18 million in taxpayer funds on $500-an-hour white-shoe lawyers who, in turn, have used depositions to browbeat and intimidate 12-year-old witnesses.  

Then there was last week’s golden moment. After Arnold’s new economic guru Warren Buffett shockingly blurted out the unspeakable truth—that Prop. 13 resides at the foundation of California’s ills—Gray Davis streaked to the microphones to offer an unmediated defense of the 25-year-old law that has left this state a basket case. Thanks, Gray.  

And now I’m supposed to be biting my nails, freaked out that if Davis gets dumped we’ll wind up with a Republican governor? Come on. As Jim Hightower likes to say, I may have been born at night, but not last night. A Republican Governor? We’ve already got one.  

With the recording industry waging a war on downloaders who snag music and films for free off the Internet, UC Berkeley administrators warned students this week that illegal downloading could carry severe consequences. 

“We’re telling students that we know lots of people are sharing copyrighted files, we know it’s easy, but it’s against the law, and you might suffer sanctions,” said Dedra Chamberlin, the university’s manager of residential computing. 

The Recording Industry Association of America, stung by slumping sales they attribute in part to online piracy, has zeroed in on universities this year, demanding that schools, like commercial Internet service providers, comply with court-ordered subpoenas and hand over the names and addresses of students the RIAA says are the worst offenders. 

In May, four students at Princeton University, Michigan Technological University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute agreed to pay the RIAA between $12,000 and $17,500 after the RIAA sued them for running music piracy systems on their schools’ servers. 

A month later, the RIAA announced it was using subpoenas to gather data against users who offer copyrighted songs online, threatening thousands of lawsuits against individual offenders.  

The RIAA says it has no choice but to fight consumers from stealing its lifeblood. 

In 1999 Shawn Fanning, a student at Northeastern University, introduced Napster, a program that electronically connected music listeners, allowing them to swap songs. 

Since then, record sales have dropped by 26 percent as 2.6 billion copyrighted files are illegally downloaded every month, said RIAA spokesperson Amanda Collins. 

“Everyone is adversely affected by this: the artists, the songwriters, the engineers, administrative staff,” she said noting widespread layoffs at struggling recording companies. 

She plugged several Internet sites that allow fans to download music legally, paying either by a subscription fee or on a per song basis. 

Managers at several independent record stores in Berkeley agreed that sales were down, but said other factors might be to blame. 

“I’m not sure that downloading is the culprit,” said Norman Arenas of Primal Records. “We’re in a war economy, people don’t have much to spend.” 

The recording industry has fought in court to protect its copyrighted property. In 2000 the RIAA won a ruling shutting down Napster, but the trade group recently hit a legal roadblock. 

Four months ago, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that two of Napster’s biggest successors, Grokster and Morpheus, did not infringe copyright law, because unlike Napster they also provided lawful services and could not be held accountable for their customers using the programs for illegal ends. 

Unable to shut down file sharing programs, the RIAA shifted its attention to individual abusers. 

They have monitored file-sharing networks and gathered 1142 subpoenas against suspected music pirates this year, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation a legal fund that represented the parent company of Morpheus against the RIAA. 

Service providers have challenged subpoenas, but in April a federal judge rejected the claim of Verizon Internet Services that the practice infringed on their customers’ privacy rights. Verizon is appealing the decision and Pacific Bell Internet Services recently filed suit against the RIAA on similar grounds. 

EFF staff attorney Wendy Seltzer urged universities to fight the subpoenas. “Networks are about academic freedom, [the universities] should think about that, not just what the RIAA wants.”  

She recommended that universities stop logging network activity, so the record industry could not track file transfers. 

Karen Eft, UC Berkeley policy analyst, responded that logging the network was needed to analyze use and investigate possible hackers. 

“We don’t do it with the intention to track students,” she said. “If we didn’t have to do it we wouldn’t.” 

UC Berkeley has so far received one subpoena. It turned out the illegal activity was the work of a hacker who had accessed an administrative computer to capture his downloads.  

Michael Smith, campus counsel, said the university would not automatically hand over anyone’s name to the RIAA. “If we thought the subpoena was faulty, if it came from the wrong jurisdiction, we could challenge it,” he said. 

Two weeks ago Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College successfully fought off subpoenas, arguing they needed to be filed in Massachusetts instead of Washington, D.C. 

Still, under increased pressure from the recording industry as well as from students and faculty who say excessive downloading is slowing down their server, UC Berkeley is getting tougher on illegal file swapping. 

Students who receive take-down notices filed by the RIAA to remove copyrighted materials from their computers will now have one day to comply before losing their service.  

Previously it was up to the administration to confirm the violation, and evasive students could delay the process, Chamberlin said. Last year 163 students in the dorms received such notices—twice as many as the year before. 

The university is also stepping up enforcement of students who download excessively. 

Students who twice surpass downloading 50 gigabytes per week—about the equivalent of four movies, 200 songs and 1,000 e-mails— will lose their Internet connection until they complete a quiz on university bandwidth rules. 

Freshmen interviewed this week said they opted not to download music out of respect to the musicians, but that the warnings they received when signing up for Internet accounts wouldn’t make a difference. “They gave their spiel,” said Travis Johnston. “I don’t think it will hamper anyone. They’ll give you a warning. They’re not that serious about it.”

The Argentine ants that infested my kitchen for the last couple of weeks are gone—for now. But when you’re dealing with Linepithema humile, all victories are temporary. 

Since they first turned up in California around 1907, these tiny pests have become the state’s most abundant ant species. If you’ve seen an ant lately, chances are it was an Argentine. Like many exotic plants and animals, they’ve left their co-evolved predators and parasites behind—South American parasitic flies, in the ants’ case. Descendants of a handful of founders, Argentine ants in California show little genetic variation. This enables them to form “supercolonies,” sometimes with multiple queens. Ants’ lives are governed by their sense of smell, which allows them to distinguish friend (or kin, at least) from foe. To an Argentine ant from Berkeley, an Argentine from San Diego would smell like family. 

The lack of conflict between neighboring colonies frees Argentines to invest more time and energy in foraging. They’re very good at it. Stanford’s Deborah Gordon, author of “Ants at Work,” says they devote more time to the search for food than native ants, are better at locating baits, and recruit more workers to a food source. They’ve also been known to drive other ant species away from baits and kill their queens. When Argentines colonize a new area, most native ants move out. 

Argentine ants aren’t just a California annoyance: They’ve spread to every continent except Antarctica, and to oceanic islands like Hawaii. Swiss scientists have discovered a megasupercolony that stretches across northern Spain along the Mediterranean to Italy, comprising millions of nests and billions of individuals—all with the right colony smell. This may be the largest cooperative unit in nature. 

The ants in our houses are only part of the problem. Wherever they’ve gone, Argentines have thrown natural communities into disarray by displacing native ants. This has not caused much concern so far (there is as of yet no California Native Ant Society) but it should. Ant species are not interchangeable. Native ants perform valuable ecosystem services; the invaders may push them out, but they can’t take over their roles. 

Native ants are part of complex food webs. Horned lizards, those eccentric reptiles perhaps better known as “horny toads,” are specialist ant-predators. (We think of them as desert creatures, but I’ve seen one species, the coast horned lizard, in chaparral on the slopes of Mount Diablo). The lizards either refuse to eat Argentine ants or waste away on all-Argentine diets. Along with habitat destruction, the loss of their prey base has reduced horned lizard populations in California to dangerously low levels. 

A wide variety of plants, from bush poppies to trilliums, rely on native ants to disperse their seeds. The seeds are packaged with nutrient-rich food bodies called elaiosomes that attract the ants. They haul the seeds away from the parent plant, where rodents and other seed predators might find them, and back to their nests. Discarded after the elaiosome has been consumed, the seeds often germinate in the ant-tilled soil. Unlike California native species, Argentine ants are not effective seed dispersers. 

In South Africa, where many plants are ant-dependent, the Argentine takeover has threatened whole plant communities with extinction. 

Some of California’s rarest butterflies, like the Bay Area’s Mission blue, have evolved an intimate relationship called trophobiosis with the local ants. The butterflies’ larvae secrete a sugar-rich substance when the ants stroke their bodies. The ants defend the caterpillars fiercely, carry them to food plants, and shelter them in their nests. To my knowledge, no one has documented Argentine ants as caterpillar-tenders. 

So there are consequences when Argentines push out natives. Can they be stopped before ecosystems from California to New Zealand are destroyed by this miniature wave of globalization? Maybe. And, ironically, the Argentine ant’s vulnerability may lie in the pheromones that have allowed the formation of supercolonies. 

The story involves a case of ant-butterfly mutualism and its exploitation by a third party, a rare wasp called Ichneumon eumerus, known from only two sites in the French Alps and two in the Spanish Pyrenees. The wasp, like many of its relatives, lays its eggs on the bodies of living caterpillars. Eumerus’s preferred victim is the larva of a blue butterfly that inhabits the nests of ants, where it repays their hospitality by feeding on ant larvae. 

It’s impressive enough that the wasp is able to sniff out caterpillars concealed underground. But its secret weapon comes into play once it enters the nest. Eumerus has evolved a set of chemicals that mimic the smell the ants use to signal alarm. Instead of attacking the intruder, the colony defenders turn on each other. Chaos ensues, during which the wasp finds the caterpillar, lays its eggs, and leaves unharmed. When the young wasps reach adulthood, they use their chemical arsenal to make their own exits. 

Although the ants in question are native Europeans, entomologists have found that the wasp’s weapon seems to affect several other species in the same way. If the scent can be replicated, we might just have an environmentally benign way of disrupting the colonies of Argentine ants, fire ants, and other pests. One more reminder— if you want to make a pragmatic case for conserving biodiversity—that you never know what small obscure creature may turn out to be really useful.

Call John Muir School in Berkeley sometime and if you’re lucky the woman answering the phone may serenade you with your own personal scat song. No, you haven’t reached the reincarnation of Ella Fiztgerald—just the principal taking a phone call when the school secretary’s too busy. 

Nancy D. Waters, the elementary school’s principal, could just moonlight on her own as a professional musician, but she incorporates it into her very demanding day job. Walking through the halls it’s not unusual for students to get an earful of Waters’ scat singing to make mundane instructions like lining up for class fun for kids. “Ooh, I like the way you look on that line” she sings and her charges “immediately just straighten up and get in that line,” says Waters, 46. 

In order to create a more harmonious atmosphere at the Elmwood district school that has had student disciplinary problems in the past, Waters established a character-building program featuring a school song. Performed in an uptempo boogie-woogie style the song is sung by students at weekly assemblies and includes the following chorus.  

“We want to work together and co-operate, 

We’re all unique with contributions to make, 

We’re learning to accept others as they are, 

We lift each other up as we reach for the stars” 

Because John Muir is the designated deaf school for the district, all students have also learned to sign the song. Of the school’s 224 students in 12 classrooms, 20 are deaf and are broken up into two classes. 

In addition to the song, Waters also has teachers give her the names of two or three kids in their classrooms who have exhibited patience or caring. “We have that student stand to be recognized. And so then all the kids say ‘Oh, well he got recognized for that, next time I’m going to try that,’” says Waters.  

Her interest in teaching character development was inspired by taking classes in college from Stephen Covey, author of the “The Seven Habits for Highly Effective People.” Waters has also worked as a motivational speaker with her presentation “Live Your Dreams” about how she succeeded despite her circumstances by hard work and practice.  

Positive reinforcement has paid off for students at John Muir. “It has changed this place, because when I came kids were jumping over fences, there were lots of fights. There were lots of suspensions. We rarely have suspensions now. There’s a calm sense to the grounds,” says Waters. She notes that the gains are not just in the area of student discipline. “Our test scores have gone up and we believe that program is helping to do it.” 

Growing up in the piney woods of the Florida panhandle the granddaughter of sharecroppers, Waters always had “this inner music in me” and took up the baritone sax. Although her parents didn’t have money for private music lessons, they recognized Waters’ musical abilities and encouraged her to practice which she did religiously in the woods behind her home. 

Waters’ prowess at the baritone sax led to her receiving a music scholarship to Brigham Young University where she earned a music degree and became classically trained on the baritone sax and the bassoon. Waters also plays the piano and the recorder. While the idea of being a professional musician appealed to her, Waters always knew she was going to be a teacher. 

“Even though I was a great musician and got lots of compliment s on my playing and singing, my focus wasn’t to be the big star musician. It was to teach,” says Waters, who began her education career teaching music in the Florida public high schools in the early 1980s. 

While on a cruise ship during her summer vacation Waters decided to perform in the passenger talent show. She wowed them with her ability to play two recorders and hum all at the same time. Waters even played the instrument with her nose—“It might look difficult, but it’s not.” Impressed, the ship’s band members told her she needed to be working with them and soon she was taking off for weeks at time to play and cruise the Caribbean during breaks from her teaching jobs.  

Waters’ taken a couple of year-long breaks from teaching to perform on cruise ships over the years, but the call of the classroom always brings her back to school. Seven years ago she moved from Florida to the Bay Area and got a job teaching music in the San Lorenzo schools. There she was tapped to become the school’s assistant principal and encouraged to pursue a career as an administrator. She took over John Muir, her first principal position, five years ago.  

With her 14 hour days, Waters doesn’t have time to perform on cruise ships, but she still gigs in pick-up bands and plays weddings and private parties with the “Blast from the Past” big band. But when it comes time to take a solo, she puts down her sax and picks up a microphone to scat a special song for the occasion. “People love it,” says Nancy D. Waters, who likes to say her middle initial stands for “delightful and don’t you doubt it.”

Berkeley students heading back to class Wednesday can expect cleaner, greener campuses, but when they step inside some school buildings rust and dirt will still prevail. 

“I think we’re making very good progress,” said district superintendent Michele Lawrence as she helped parents and students sweep clean the high school grounds Saturday morning. 

“When I arrived we had almost every safety issue imaginable: pipes sticking out, ruts in the sidewalk, holes in playgrounds, electrical problems.” 

Voter largess has been key to sprucing up the schools. In 1992 and again in 2000 voters approved ballot measures adding more than $300 million in new property taxes earmarked for school maintenance. 

The district has used the money to retrofit and remodel 14 of the 16 schools, and the crown jewel of the construction boom, the new King Middle School, was premiered for residents Saturday. After two years spent housed in portable classrooms, the school’s approximately 800 students will move into a totally remodeled building. Total price tag: $20 million. 

This winter, Berkeley High School students should reap their own benefits from the building boom. Two years in the works and eight months late, the new library, dining hall, gymnasium, and dance studio being built along Milvia Street is expected to be ready for students by the start of 2004. 

While some high school buildings will be state of the art, others remain in a state of disrepair. A walk from recently renovated Building G to untouched Building C feels like a trip to the wrong side of down. 

“This place is kind of funky,” said PTSA Facilities Committee Chair Bill Savidge leading a tour through the blighted building. He said the structure’s electrical system needs overhauling, the bathrooms require retrofitting, fixtures need to be replaced and some sinks don’t work.  

For high school seniors who entered the school just after the B Building burned down, the campus they will leave next year will bear little resemblance to the one they entered. 

This year the blacktop that has covered the ground where the B building stood will finally be ripped up in favor of a grass courtyard, the only sod on the entire 17-acre campus. Trees and seedlings will also be planted. 

Craigmont Elementary and King Middle School will also have new courtyards, said John Crockett, the district supervisor, who said progress should be evident to any visitor. “When I came to this district it was really bad,” he said. “We had weeds up to our necks on a lot of sites and 20 dead trees that could tip over.” 

Since he took over the job three years ago, the district has used money from the voter initiatives to help beautify the campuses by raising the district gardening staff from three to eight. 

But step inside the buildings and the remaining problems become evident, in large part because maintenance funds cannot pay for custodial needs. The district was forced to lay off two high school custodians this year, and maintenance dollars come from the district’s general fund, which is $5 million in the hole. 

New high school principal Jim Slemp complimented the staff on getting the buildings ready for the students, but acknowledged the school was shorthanded. “Things won’t get fixed as fast and there will be less preventative maintenance,” he said. 

Students helping to clean the campus Saturday said they didn’t expect the buildings to stay clean for long. 

“It gets really filthy,” said senior Nico Smith. “Some classrooms don’t get swept, it’s bad.” She and her friends, though reserved special disdain for the bathrooms. “They are disgusting, vile, repulsive,” said senior Christine Cutillo. “You’re lucky if you have paper.”

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26 

Berkeley Stop the War Coalition meets at 7 p.m. in 100 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. Presentation by Max Elbaum, Founder, War Times Newspaper. For more information, please email info@berkeleystopthewar.org or visit www.berkeleystopthewar.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Charles Fitch will show travel slides. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke Seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672 for information or check our web page, http://home.comcast.net/ 

~teachme99/tildenwalkers. 

Lawyers in the Library at 6 p.m. at the West Branch, University above San Pablo. 981-6270. 

Morris Dancing Workshop Learn the basics of an English ritual dance form that predates Shakespeare, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. at Oxford. Free and open to all. www.talamasca.com/berkmorris 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27 

Free Lead-Safe Painting and Remodeling Class Learn how to detect and remedy lead hazards and conduct lead-safe renovations for your older home. From 6 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Branch Library, 1901 Russell St. For information or to register call the Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at 567-8280.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities. 

com/vigil4peace/vigil 

South Berkeley Mural Project Community members in South Berkeley are coming together to create a neighborhood mural on the side of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Ashby Ave. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. At 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios at 1923 Ashby Ave. For information please call 644-2204. 

Berkeley Food Policy Council meets at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. The Berkeley Food Policy Council (BFPC) is a coalition of residents, non-profit agencies, community groups, school district and city agencies to increase community food access and help build a healthy regional food system. For information call 548-3333.  

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in to file complaints, assistance available. For information call 548-0425. 

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-5143.  

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28 

40th Anniversary of the National Civil Rights March on Washington, most remembered by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, will be celebrated at 7 p.m. at Berkeley City Hall, 2180 Milvia St. Residents who were present 40 years ago will reconfirm their commitment to the March pledge. Civil Rights supporters who could not attend the original event 40 years ago will be invited to take the Civil Rights pledge for the first time. For information contact 981-7170 or berkeleycivilrightsanniversary@yahoo.com 

Fiscal Management for Non-Profits, a technical assistance workshop offered by Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Alameda County Confer- 

ence Center, 125 12th St, 4th floor. For information contact Felicia Moore-Jordan, 268-5376. 

Great Paddling Destinations in Baja and No. California with Roger Schumann at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140.  

Berkeley Painters’ Critique Group meets to discuss new concepts and techniques with paint media at 6:30 p.m. at The Art Gym, 1717D Fourth St. 527-0600. www.geocities.com/berkeleypainters 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

Tibetan Yungdrun Bon Institute Healing Retreat from Fri. through Sun. at the Dzogchen Community West Center, 2748#D Adeline St. For information call 526-2343. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 

Kids’ Summer Jam at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, with great entertainment for the whole family. Free. From 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Black August International Benefit for Haiti at 6 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater, Allston Way and MLK, Jr. Way. Speakers and performers include Amandia Poets, Avotcja and Modupue, Dr. Hatim Bazian, Chrystos, E. W. Wainwright and the African Roots of Jazz, Wanda Sabir, Sundiate Tate, and many, many others. Please bring a package of school supplies to support Haiti’s literacy campaign. 415-391-3844. 

Backyard Graywater Treatment Wetlands The Guerrilla Graywater People present a day-long, hands on workshop on designing and building small-scale graywater treatment wetlands. These systems use recycled materials and simple tools to create small wetlands that treat the water from a sink or shower for use in your garden. You will learn basic plumbing skills, methods of wastewater treatment, what plants to use in different situations, and how to design a graywater treatment wetlands for your home. We will be constructing a small treatment wetlands at a house in North Oakland. Cost is $15-$25, no one turned away for lack of funds. Call for location and more information  

428-2354.  

Alternative Materials: Cob and Strawbale Two natural building methods are currently undergoing renewed popularity. Cob is an ancient technique using a mixture of earth, sand and straw; it requires only simple handtools and can easily be shaped into imaginative structures. Strawbales are highly insulative and create an Old World character of thick walls and deepset windows. Workshop from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. 525-7610.  

Planting for the Shade, a free workshop with Aerin Moore, at 10 a.m. An introduction to a variety of perennials and shrubs that are suitable for varying amounts of shade and those that will extend your shade-garden color through summer and fall. Held at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 520-6927, 654-2484. www.magicgardens.com  

Ernest Callenbach and the Wild Buffalo of Yellowstone. Join author Ernest Callenbach and folks from the Buffalo Field Campaign as they talk about their efforts to protect America's last wild, free-ranging buffalo located in Yellowstone National Park, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. Free. 548-2220 x233. 

Bay Trail Bike Ride Join CESP, Friends of Albany Beach, Friends of 5 Creeks and the Bay Trail in celebrating the recreational opportunities that the newly established Eastshore State Park and the Bay Trail affords. Meet at 10 a.m. at Rydin Rd. near Central Ave. west of I-580, to ride from Albany through Berkeley to Emeryville, stopping to lunch at Dorothy’s Sea Breeze Café. Bring helmets, sunblock and plenty of water. Prepare for variable weather as winds tend to pick up along the shore. For more information, contact Susan Schwartz, 848-9358, or Tina Gerhardt, 848 - 0800, ext. 313. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31  

Dignity Day at the Berkeley Bowl, a rally in support of workers who are seeking union recognition at 5 p.m. at 2020 Oregon St. For information call Kevin at 499-4694. 

Herb Walk Learn to identify and use many edible and medicinal plants that grow wild in the Bay Area. Meet at noon at the Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail head, below the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens on Centennial Drive. Call for directions. Cost is $6-$25 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. Sponsored by the Pacific School of Herbal Medicine. 845-4028. www.pshm.org 

Tibetan Buddhism, Abbe Blum on “The Tibetan Wheel of Life” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 

Labor Day - Berkeley City Offices Are Closed 

Rainbow Berkeley 5th Annual Brunch, celebrating Berkeley's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans- 

gender, Queer, Intersex, and Questioning (LGBTQI) community. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Hs Lordships Restaurant at the Berkeley Marina. Sponsorship is available at several different levels, call 548-9235 or email RB@tksvc.com. Individual reservations for the brunch are available online at www.eastbayvoice.org/tickets and in person at Boadecia's Books, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington, 559-9184. Tickets will also be available at the door. Suggested donation is $10-$20.  

Back 2 School Youth Jam presented by South Berkeley Community Action Team from 1 to 6 p.m. in the Malcolm X School Playground.  

Berkeley Biodiesel Cooper- 

ative Orientation at 7:30 p.m. for those interested in biodiesel. Call for location. 594-4000 ext. 777. biobauerx@hotmail.com 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING  

Vista Community College Program for Adult Education (PACE) Enrollment through Sept. 6. PACE is a college alternative for adults with job and family responsibilities.For information call 981-2864 or 981-2800 or email mclausen@peralta.cc.ca.us  

Free Smoke Detectors UC Berkeley and First Alert, Inc. have donated smoke detectors to be made available to City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications for smoke detectors are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Administration Office located at 2100 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Aug. 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/civicarts 

Energy Commission meets Wed., Aug. 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/com 

missions/energy 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Aug. 28, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning 

Charisma. That’s a word you don’t hear much lately, especially in connection with political candidates. Merriam-Webster offers two definitions: 

“1 : an extraordinary power …given…by the Holy Spirit…for good… 2 : a personal magic of leadership arousing…. enthusiasm for a  

…political leader.” 

Al Sharpton, who gave a sermon at Oakland’s Allen Temple Baptist Church yesterday, can lay claim to both meanings. In his youth he made a few mistakes, backed a few of the wrong horses, but in his maturity he seems to be one of the rather small number of political leaders who are now inspired, from whatever source, to make pretty good sense most of the time. 

Of course, that won’t get him much of anywhere in the presidential sweepstakes. When he appears on panels with the other candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, he usually gets off a few eminently quotable lines, but no one takes him seriously as a candidate. He deals with that, as he does many other things, with a quip: “They ask me why I’m running if I can’t win the nomination. Well, there are nine candidates, and eight of them are bound to lose, so ask the others why they’re running.” 

The theme of his sermon at Allen Temple was dealing with mockers like those he meets campaigning. The text was a passage from Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus, after he was captured by Roman soldiers, was crowned with thorns and hailed sarcastically as a king. 

Rev. Sharpton said that a lot of contemporary life seems to be a mockery of the accomplishments of the civil rights movement. He pointed out that George W. Bush’s whole career was an awful parody of the concept of affirmative action—admitted to college because of who his father was, ascending to the Presidency because of a “Supreme Court set-aside” instead of being elected. He took aim at Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly as examples of “negro amnesia,” a disease that causes you to forget how you got where you are. “Even our children,” he said, “sometimes mock us, when they say that thuggery is black culture.” 

It was, altogether, quite a fine sermon. Rev. Sharpton’s strategy for dealing with mockers is in the self-help tradition: “Even if you’re not responsible for being knocked down, you’re responsible for not getting up again.” 

He’s a realist, of course. At a press conference following the service he said that voters should vote no on recall, yes on Bustamante—standard pragmatic Democratic advice. He spoke of the urgent need for Blacks and Latinos to heal any rifts which may exist between them. No Democratic candidate for president, he pointed out, has gotten the majority of the white vote in a long time, so the Democrats need minority voters, who should insist on getting what they need in return. 

Everyone who cares about what is happening in the world today can use a little of Sharpton’s brand of inspirational talk, since world events often seem to be making a mockery of our efforts to achieve peace and justice in the forty years since the March on Washington. And if inspiration is needed, we’re going to have trouble getting it from most of the other Democratic candidates. 

Dr. Dean, by most accounts, gives a pretty good stump speech, but frankly, just for Berkeley consumption, his record on environment, gun control and capital punishment is less than inspiring. Kucinich is sincere, and right on most things, but his new-agey personal style is anti-charismatic for a lot of voters. And the rest of them are pretty indistinguishable from lots of other middle-aged white guys in suits, except for Lieberman, who’s dreadful. 

And Lieberman will campaign for Bustamante, his California chair. Now that’s really uninspiring, but we should probably take Rev. Sharpton’s advice and vote for Bustamante anyhow. So thanks, Reverend Al, for coming here to buck us up—we need all the inspiration we can get. 

Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie “The Passion” is already stirring up passions more than half a year before its scheduled release—which is not surprising, since it deals with the emotionally charged subject of the crucifixion of Jesus. The intensity of the debate recalls the firestorm sparked by Martin Scorcese’s 1988 movie “The Last Temptation of Christ.” 

But in a way, “The Passion” is the anti-“Last Temptation.” Scorcese’s film, which showed Jesus grappling with doubt about his mission and almost succumbing to the temptation of a normal life that included marriage to Mary Magdalene, drew the ire of religious conservatives and Catholics in particular. Gibson’s film is being championed by religious conservatives who charge that criticism of “The Passion” is driven by an antireligious animus. The controversy centers on the film’s portrayal of Jews and their role in Jesus’ execution. For centuries, the charge that the Jews had Jesus’ blood on their hands has been a driving force behind anti-Semitism. In Europe, “passion plays” depicting the suffering and death of Christ often provoked anti-Jewish violence. 

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council formally repudiated the belief that Jews, past or present, are collectively responsible for “deicide.” In recent years, Christians and Jews have worked together to rid passion plays of anti-Semitism. Some worry that after decades of progress, Gibson’s movie could be a throwback to the old prejudices. 

One reason for these apprehensions is that Gibson belongs to a “traditionalist” Catholic movement which rejects the 1965 reforms; his father, a prominent member of this movement, has been quoted as saying that Vatican II was the result of a Jewish-Masonic plot. Moreover, a favorable early report on the film, based on an interview with Gibson himself, said that the film script had drawn on the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th-century nun who described her purported visions about the last days of Jesus. Among other things, Emmerich claimed that the cross on which Jesus died was built in the Jewish temple on the orders of the high priest. (Only after the Simon Wiesenthal Center called attention to Emmerich’s virulent anti-Semitism did a spokesman for Gibson’s Icon Productions disavow her work as a source.) 

Gibson’s defenders argue that the movie is quite different from the script and is being condemned sight unseen. But Gibson hasn’t helped his case by limiting the preview screenings almost entirely to friendly audiences of political, cultural, and religious conservatives while denying access to critics, including such respected groups as the Anti-Defamation League. When a representative of the league finally saw the film last week, he stated that in its present form it was likely to fuel hatred and bigotry. Of particular concern is the reaction in countries where such bigotry is already a major problem—including the Arab world. 

Few people worry about an outburst of violent anti-Semitism in the United States. But in its own way, the attitude of some champions of “The Passion” is troubling. A few seem positively gleeful about the distress caused by the movie—and quite in-your-face about it. “I want to see any movie that drives the anti-Christian entertainment elite crazy,” conservative commentator Laura Ingraham has been quoted as saying. Others, including conservative Jews such as film critic Michael Medved, have blamed the hostile reception of the film on “liberal activists who worry over the ever-increasing influence of religious traditionalism in American life.” Medved, who has attended a screening of “The Passion,” clears the film of charges of anti-Semitism on the rather dubious grounds that it emphasizes Jesus’ Jewish identity by giving the part to an actor with Semitic features and having Jesus and the apostles speak their lines in Aramaic, the authentic language of ancient Judea. 

Meanwhile, some rhetoric on the right has implied that the controversy is a Jewish assault on a Christian film. The National Association of Evangelicals has warned that, given evangelical Christians’ strong support for Israel, Jewish leaders should not “risk alienating two billion Christians over a movie.” After criticizing the film, the Anti-Defamation League has received dozens of vile anti-Semitic phone calls and e-mails. 

The biblical account of Jesus’ life and death should not be sacrificed to political correctness. But the cry of political correctness can also become a cover for very real bigotry. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Since this article was written, Gibson has agreed to include scenes in which some Jews don’t call for Jesus’s death.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “Ashura: This Blood Spilled in My Veins” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Fragments From the War on Terror “Civilian Casualties,” a film by September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. A free film series co-sponsored by Ber- 

keley Peace Walk and Vigil. For more information see www.geo- 

cities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Summer Poetry, with Daphne Gotlieb, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Mediterranean Café, 2475 Telegraph Ave. Free, open mic, poetry, prose, short fiction, amateur and advanced artists welcome. 549-1128. 

Bruce Moody discusses his new book, “Will Work for Food or $,” about begging by the roadside, at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Maria Espinosa reads from her novel, “Incognito: Journey of a Secret Jew,” at 7:30 p.m. Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ilgi, a night of Latvian song, music and games at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27 

FILM 

Excess of Evil: “The Blood on Satan’s Claw” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Converging/Diverging Faiths: Islam and Christianity from the Center,” an evening with Seyed Hossein Nasr and Houston Smith at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Co-sponsored by First Congre- 

gational Church of Berkeley, The Islamic Center of Northern California and Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Café Poetry and Open Mic hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Donation requested. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Hawaiian Music’s Next Generation with Keoki Kahumoku, Herb Ohta, Jr., Patrick Landeza, and David Kamakahi, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sauce Piquante at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Diana Castillo at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jules Broussard and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Third World, MC UC BUU at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Tele- 

graph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Supplicants perform at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “A Grin Without a Cat” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, Curator’s Talk by Alla Efimova, at 12:15 p.m. in Gallery 2, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Marie Etienne reads from her story of an abused childhood, “Storkbites,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Marguerite Sprague discusses and shows slides of “Bodie’s Gold: Tall Tales and True History Froma California Mining Town,” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533. www.easygoing.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Omar Faruk Tebilek and Ensemble performs traditional Sufi, folk and contemporary music from the Middle East at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20 in advance, $22 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

((sYncrosYstem)), all-acoustic global groove ensemble performs at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Grateful Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave at 10 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Boatclub, Moore Brothers, Yuji Oniki, Chicken on a Raft at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

The Jessica Jones Quartet, jazz saxophone, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 

CHILDREN 

Why Wemberly Worried at 10:30 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

FILM 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” at 7 and 9:25 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenez. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Strictly Skills, a celebration of Hip Hop, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

2 Foot Yard, El Faye at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee Quartet and The Justin Morrell Group perform at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Suggested donation $15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at 9:30 p.m. at Down- 

town, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Rhiannon with Bowl Full of Sound, jazz vocal and intrumental ensemble, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mike Silverman, aka That 1 Guy, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck at Allston. 843-8277. 

Allegiance, The Answer, Dead in Hollywood, Physical Challenge, Lahar perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

D’Amphibians, Monkey Knife Fight at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 

FILM 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” at 5 and 8:50 p.m. and “The Merchant of Four Seasons” at 7 p.m at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 2 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concerts, with pianist Ivan Ilic playing an all-German program, at 8 p.m. at Trininy Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Admission by donation, $12 general, $8 students, senoirs, disabled. No one turned away. 549-3864. 

Kotoja performs Afro-Beat at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

African Drum Workshop with Wade Peterson. Beginners from 10 to 11:30 a.m., experienced from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15-$25, and advance registration is encouraged. 533-5111. 

Desoto Reds, Rich McCulley Band, Continuous Peasant at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mystic Roots, Serendipity at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

peAktimes, improvisational performance art, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Osvaldo Torres, Chilean singer,songwriter and storyteller, in concert at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12 in advance, $14 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mimi Fox Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Pitch Black, Scurvy Dogs, Deadfall, Desolation, Look Back and Laugh perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour of “Gene(sis)” at 2 p.m. at The Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

FILM 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “The Marriage of Maria Braun”at 5:30 and 7:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Deaf Electric, electronic, turn- 

tablism, experimental music and visuals, at 7 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $6-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

2-on-2 Bboy/Bgirl Battle from 2 to 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Presented by Tomorrow's Chil- 

dren, this fast-paced contest of 2-on-2 bboy and bgirl artists offers a $75 prize for 2-on-2 winners aged 16 years and under, and a $150 prize for 2-on-2 winners 17 years and up. Performers include Sisterz of the Underground, The Greans, MachineGun Funk, and Robot Jones. Judged by Danny-Renegades and Karma-Flexible Flav/Zulu Kings. Cost is $5 for 16 years and under/$7 for 17 years and older. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Tang, The Latrells at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

AT THE THEATER 

California Shakespeare Festival runs until October 22. Performances this year will be Julius Caesar, Arms and the Man, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing. Please call for performance dates and times. The Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org  

Impact Theatre, “Impact Briefs 6: Shock and Awe,” an evening of ultra-short comedies, directed by Joy Meads. Runs to Sept. 27, at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid. Tickets are $15, $10 seniors and students. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Josh Kornbluth’s “Love and Taxes,” a tale of falling in love while wrangling with the Kafkaesque IRS. Runs through Sept. 14. Performances Wed. - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 and 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $25-$40, available from 647-2949 or 888-4BRT-TIX. www.zspace.org 

Shotgun Players, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Hare, directed by Patrick Dooley. Runs Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. in John Hinkle Park, until Sept. 14. Show Sept. 13 is at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Free. 704-8210.  

www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS  

ACCI Gallery, “Space, Time, and Temperature” ACCI Members Exhibition, with Artists Paula Powers, Susan Putnam, Vee Tuteur, Dorothy Porter, Bill Shin, Vannie Keightley, Olga Segal and Peggy Yendell. Exibition runs Aug. 27 to Sept. 27. Opening Reception on Fri., Sept. 5th from 6 to 8 p.m. Gallery hours are Mon. - Thurs. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1652 Shattuck Ave.  

843-2527. acciart@aol.com, www.accigallery.com 

Bancroft Library, “Towards A Sustainable Earth,” exploring the preservation of the American wilderness, the use of water resources, air quality, species survival, the development of alternative energy resources and urban development, and the cumulative effects of modern life on the environment in California and the American West. Runs Aug 21. - Nov. 21, Gallery hours are Mon. - Fri. 9 a.m - 5 p.m., Sat. 1 - 5 p.m. 642-3781. 

Berkeley Art Center, 19th National Juried Exhibition: “Works on Paper,” runs to Sept. 13. Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park, 1275 Walnut St. Open Wed. - Sun. noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Berkeley Art Museum, Matrix 207: Anne Von Mertens “Suggested North Points,” hand-dyed and hand-stiched quilts, to Sept. 7.  

“Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Gennomics” featuring contemporary artists’ visions of a genetically modified future, August 27 through December 7.  

“Turning Corners,” an exhibition of five centuries of innovative art, through the summer of 2004. The UC Berkeley Art Museum is open Wed. - Sun., 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Admission $8, free to UC staff, faculty and students, and free for the general public the first Thurs. of every month, 2626 Bancroft Way, 642-0808.                   www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Historical Society, “Focus on Berkeley” A photography exhibit by the Berkeley Camera Club, Berkeley High School students and community photographers in celebration of the City’s 125th Anniversary. Runs until Sept. 13. Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. Sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society. 848-0181.  

Berkeley Public Library, “The Lighter Side of Crop Circles,” photographs by Ben Ailes. Runs until Aug. 30. First Floor Catalog Lobby, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6100. 

Graduate Theological Union Library, “Hand-crafted Books by Bay Area Artists,” Zea Morwitz, Mary Eubank, Nance O'Banion, Ted Purves, Susanne Cockrell, Karen Sjoholm, and Lisa Kokin. Each book is accompanied by a statement addressing the issues and process involved in the creation of the work. Runs until Sept. 30. Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2541. 

Kala Art Institute, Kala Fellowship Exhibition, Part II Runs until Sept. 6. Call for gallery hours. 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org  

Lawrence Hall of Science, “Lego Ocean Adventure” The underwater world comes to life through role play and hands-on activities. Children learn how people eat, sleep, and work while living underwater as well as how scientists explore the ocean depths using unmanned rovers. Runs until Sept. 7. 

“K'NEXtech” Technology meets your imagination--without stumbling blocks. Construct models from colorful K'NEX pieces, which snap easily together, of whatever you can imagine. Or just examine the amazing K'NEX sculptures built by professional designers all made with more than half a million K'NEX pieces. Runs to Sept. 14. Lawrence Hall of Science is open 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Cost is $8 for adults, $6 for youth 5-18, seniors and disabled, $4 for children 3-4, free for children under 3. Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive, above the UC Campus. 643-5961.  

www.lawrencehallofscience.org 

A New Leaf Gallery/Sculpture Site, “Four Elements of Sculpture: Fire, Air, Water and Earth,” Exhibition runs to August 31. 1286 Gilman St. Call for gallery hours. 527-7621. www.sculpturesite.com 

Red Oak Realty “Mixed Media,” by Stan Whitehead. Exhibition runs through Oct. 23, Mon. - Sat., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 1891 Solano Ave. 527-3387. 

Slater/Marinoff & Co., “All Animal Art” Forty photographers and artists have donated works to help fund the spay-neuter and food costs of the Milo Foundation’s work in finding new homes for abandoned dogs and cats. Exhibition runs until Aug. 31. Hours are Mon. - Sat., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sun., 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1823 Fourth St. 548-2001. 

Sway Gallery, “Secret Summer” paintings, installations, collages, prints, drawings, and mixed media by Nana Hayashi, Greg Moore, Marc Snegg, Gab- 

rielle Wolodarski. Runs to Oct. 5. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. every day. 2569 Telegraph Ave. 489-9054.

AC Transit Bus drivers facing certain job cuts over the pending December elimination of 34 bus lines—nearly one in four—voted Saturday to stage a one-day weekday walkout, the date yet to be determined. 

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, representing the drivers, will petition Alameda’s central labor council next week to sanction the work stoppage to protest potential layoffs and service cuts that union officials say target poorer neighborhoods. 

“The real issue is that service is being ripped out of Richmond, North Oakland and West Oakland,” said Local 192 President Christine Zook. 

After two pulic hearings in June, the AC Transit board slashed 34 lines and altered service on 37 others in order to close a budget gap that has spiraled to $50 million dollars in a $250 million dollar budget. The cuts amount to about 10 percent of all service, and will result in driver layoffs. 

Drivers are under contract through next summer, but union officials say the walkout will help call attention to service cuts they say most riders don’t even know about. 

“People don’t know this is coming, people are going to be waiting for a bus that won’t come,” said Zook. “If we pull service for a day, we can alert everyone now.” 

Zook said the walkout would protest AC Transit’s singling out of lines that serve poor communities. 

Berkeley survived the cuts relatively unscathed, she said, because the city has a lot of activists to bark at AC Transit officials, while other, less organized communities were hard hit. 

Berkeley did suffer losses in the last round of AC Transit cuts that took effect in June. Route 8 that ran from downtown Bart to the Berkeley Hills was eliminated and service to the Marina on Route 51 was canceled. 

Jamie Levin, AC Transit’s director of marketing and communication, called the union’s claims outrageous. “We have no choice but to evaluate [service cuts] on an efficiency standpoint,” he said. “If there are only 20 riders an hour we have no choice but to cut.” 

Many of the doomed routes serve outlying areas and feed into big lines that run down major thoroughfares. 

Transit officials say they hope eliminating these lines will improve efficiency, but Zook worries that if riders can’t get to the main lines, they will stop using the bus altogether. 

AC Transit is pleading with union officials not to pursue the work stoppage, fearing that any shutdown of service would only outrage customers and force them to find other forms of transportation. 

The vote to walk out comes amidst increasing tension between the bus drivers and transit officials. 

Recently some drivers started posting notices on fare boxes warning of future service cuts, some of which transit officials said were untrue. 

Levin pointed to a skull on crossbones he saw hung on a Route 43 bus stating, “this line is dead.” The line, however, is not slated for elimination. 

Other riders reported seeing fliers and handmade notes warning of line eliminations, including the Number 67 which serves Berkeley, and also has not been affected by the cuts. 

AC Transit included a note with every driver’s paycheck on Aug. 12, warning them that posting or handing out unauthorized fliers was prohibited. 

“This does more damage to the bus service,” Levin said. “It scares riders and it scares the public.” 

Service cuts alone will not plug AC Transit’s deficit. Beginning Sept. 1, fares for 10-ride passes will jump from $13 to $15 and monthly passes will increase from $50 to $60. Also AC Transit ended a pilot program giving free rides to poor high school and middle school students on their way to school. 

AC Transit’s money woes stem from decreased ridership, rising health care costs and the ailing economy. Forty percent of their funding comes from sales tax revenue, which Levin says is down 40 percent this year. Health care payments were up 28 percent last year and the number of riders slipped from 71.6 million in 2001-2002 to 68 million the following year. 

Zook lays much of the blame for the budget shortfall on the Metropolitan Transit Commission which she says shortchanges bus riders in favor of BART and Bay Bridge commuters. 

“We’re picking crumbs off the table,” she said. “If there were a five to seven-dollar bridge toll, we wouldn’t have transit funding problems.” 

The work stoppage may cause headaches for more than just bus riders. Union officials hope the labor council will persuade other unions to join in sympathy with the drivers. Labor council representatives refused to speculate on sympathy strikes. 

When UC Berkeley clerical workers staged a three-day walkout last year, unionized construction and delivery workers boycotted the campus. 

AC Transit riders polled Sunday in downtown Berkeley expressed sympathy for the drivers, but opposed any walkout.  

“They need to organize mini-buses or some other alternative so people can get to work, said Oakland resident J. Pierre. Would a walkout make her give up on AC Transit? “I don’t have any other way to get to work,” she said.

RUINOUS FIDDLING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is to thank you for your reasoned, weighed, intelligent approach to Shakespeare in David Sundelson’s review of the California Shakespeare Theatre’s latest, “Measure for Measure” (Daily Planet, Aug. 15-18). A difficulty with any play is sustaining its integrity and assuring its accessibility over the years. When the years exceed 400, directors may fiddle with fundamentals. From Daniel Fish’s previous CDF production of “Cymbeline” and from his current SCT “Measure for Measure,” his modus operandi is ruinous fiddling. 

Too bad for the audience. 

Looking forward to more apt and pithy reviews by Sundelson. 

Mikel Clifford 

• 

THE FIRST MYTH 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

The Berkeley Daily Planet for Aug. 15-18 had an article titled “Five Myths About the Recall.” There is another myth which actually comes first. 

This prime myth is that a recall of the governor alone, somehow either also recalls the lieutenant governor or eliminates his constitutional right to succeed; and that this requires an interim “replacement elections” as part of the recall ballot.  

Democrats and even the courts have bought into this myth. It is apparently based on the Elections Code which has wording that such an election shall be held “if appropriate.” 

Vacancies in offices which have no elected replacement may be appropriately filled by an interim election. But the governorship is unique in having, standing by, an already elected lieutenant,” constitutionally empowered to become governor the instant the sitting governor is removed. The constitution thus prevents a vacancy in this highest office in California government. 

Courts will rue the day they allowed, contrary to the constitutional plan, replacement candidates’ names on the recall ballot for governor. The Supreme Court should rectify this and remove such names. The lieutenant governor still has the sole right to succeed. 

Henry P. Schroerluke 

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SCHOOL MOVE 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Regarding the Adult School move to Franklin: Our neighborhood is now in the hands of the very same school district staff and consultants who made drew up the original third-rate proposal and who alienated so many residents with their game-playing and their bumbling. 

The people who entrusted us to these functionaries—the superintendent and the school board—earnestly pledge that we will be listened to as the project moves along. We’ll see. 

There’s really no reason for district officials, who are now victorious after a bruising fight, to be gallant and creative. We have been put in the place they always wanted us—silence. It’s up to Superintendent Michele Lawrence to change that mindset, a tall order. 

As for the school board, that’s a more complicated story. Two board members—John Selawsky and Nancy Riddle—showed some signs of being able to think outside the district box. We’ll see if this means the board can go from being a rubber stamp for the superintendent and staff to performing an active checks-and-balances role for those who elected them. 

Unfortunately, here, too, the odds are not particularly good. There were many issues and details that the board could have questioned the staff and outside experts about. For the most part, they gave the staff a pass. 

Another sign that the board is not there yet was the bizarre Berkeley ritual of having someone—in this case, a slick consultant paid to help the superintendent finesse this issue—list for the record all the community meetings that officials had attended. The city council does this, too. It's embarrassing to watch. It’s like a church ritual that has lost meaning over time. It assumes, of course, that being there is the same as listening. So, instead of taking the vote and relieving our agony, the board members and superintendent sat there being told how much they care about community, and followed that with their own testimonials to themselves about how much they care. 

We’ll see. 

Jamie Day 

• 

SPRINT TRICKERY 

The following letter was addressed to City Councilmember Dona Spring.  

I was in a neighborhood meeting in June when Sprint plan to mount antennae on the roof of Starbucks at 1600 Shattuck Ave. was discussed. I have been following this issue as I receive e-mails from neighbors. In July I sent an e-mail to the councilors to express my opposition to the antennae. 

I work close to Etcheverry Hall on UC Campus. There are two Sprint antennae on the roof of this building. Last week I was in the food court by Etcheverry Hall waiting for my food when I was approached by a guy. He asked me if I wanted to sign a petition in order to have better cell phone coverage in the area. I asked him what area. The guy said this general area. I did not sign. I also saw him going door to door in the food court asking for signatures. 

I talked to the members of Radiation Free Gourmet Ghetto about Sprint petition. They told me Sprint has hired an agency to collect signatures all around the town by asking people if they want more coverage. They ask people by BART or downtown, etc., without telling them better coverage in what area. When the Sprint agent did not tell me what area I realized he was not familiar with the area. He asked me to sign while we were standing next to a building on the top of which there are two antennae. Do we need more coverage there? I believe this is entirely dishonest. Sprint is trying to cheat people and the City of Berkeley. We don’t want a corporation intrude into our community by trickery. 

Please discount all signatures to be presented by Sprint. They are collected by trickery and deceit. Also, please don't let corporations take over the City; deny permit to Sprint. 

Many thanks. 

Helena Bautin 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Accessible Pedestrians Signals project for safety of blind citizens, whose installation was approved by Berkeley City Council sometime ago, has been stalled. 

It would seem that some Public Works employees prefer the ‘domes’ at $15,000 per intersection over the 'bars' $500 per intersection installation investment which they think is safer for guiding and directing blind pedestrians through Berkeley downtown traffic. 

Continued current installations at corners could be fatal, since the 'domes' $15,000 guidance pieces have been placed in such a way that blind pedestrians might easily be misled into walking diagonally out into moving traffic. 

Now that the Traffic Engineering Department has willingly taken on and is ready to go ahead with the less expensive and more clearly designated pieces ($500 per intersection of 'bars' installations), let's hope there will be no further delay or wrangling among city employees as to which piece of sidewalk installation works better for safety of blind pedestrians, if not also for our City's budget. 

Arlene Merryman 

For Henry Jenkins, a professor of media studies at MIT, the video game Grand Theft Auto III is a bit like “Birth of a Nation,” the 1915 film that cineastes praise for helping create the basic grammar of the movies and simultaneously damn for celebrating the Ku Klux Klan. 

“In terms of what it does for games as a medium, Grand Theft Auto III is an enormous step forward,” says Jenkins. “It represents a totally different model of how games can tell stories and what you can do in a gamespace. It happens to be yoked with some sophomoric images of violence that a lot of us wish weren’t there.” 

Mary Lou Dickerson, a Seattle Democrat in the Washington State legislature, sees only the violence. Earlier this year, she sponsored legislation banning stores from selling or renting violent video games to anyone under the age of 17. The bill, signed into law in May, defines “violent” as “realistic or photographic-like depictions of aggressive conflict in which the player kills, injures, or otherwise causes physical harm to a human form in the game who is depicted, by dress or other recognizable symbols, as a public law enforcement officer.” 

Pushing the bill in her constituent newsletter, Dickerson cited five recent murders in California. “One of the six youthful murder suspects confessed their random killings were inspired by the popular game Grand Theft Auto III,” she wrote. “’We play the game by day, we live the game by night,’ he boasted to police.” 

“Birth of a Nation” faced censorship battles too. In those days, the courts held that the First Amendment didn’t apply to the movies, which were seen as a medium more for pie fights than for art. In other words, they were viewed the way video games are widely viewed today. In 2002 U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh ruled that video games are not protected speech. In June of this year, however, his decision was reversed by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

That doesn’t have a direct impact on Dickerson’s legislation--since it targets minors, not general audiences, it gets much more leeway under current jurisprudence. A more promising development took place in July, when U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik issued a preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of the Washington law, citing a series of free-speech concerns. “All of the games provided to the Court for review are expressive and qualify as speech for the purposes of the First Amendment,” Lasnik wrote. “In fact, it is the nature and effect of the message being communicated by these video games which prompted the state to act in this sphere.” 

But the issue is still legally contentious. Forward-looking critics such as Jenkins, and an increasing number of game designers, believe that video games can be art—and that laws like this could retard the new medium’s development. But many people regard them as toys at best and dangerous diversions at worst. As John Springhall put it in “Youth, Popular Culture, and Moral Panics:” “A new medium with mass appeal, and with a technology best understood by the young...almost invariably attracts a desire for adult or government control.” 

Video games date back to the early 1960s, but they didn’t become popular until Pong and Space Invaders arrived in the 70s, bringing the dreaded video arcade with them. A dark maze filled with nickelodeon-sized consoles, the arcade became a magnet for anxieties and urban legends. For fretful parents, they were a hangout for hooligans cutting class to play Pac-Man, losing hours and quarters that could be spent in the fresh air and wholesome sunshine. Worse, those spaceship-shooting toughs would become role models for younger arcade goers. Before you knew it, they’d be learning not just how to save a girl from Donkey Kong but how to smoke weed, play slots, and steal cars. 

The fear of arcades dates back to long before video games existed, as anyone familiar with the pool hall scene in “The Music Man” already knows. Any public space that appeals to kids but is not under constant adult supervision is going to inspire anxieties. If games, traditionally associated with sin, are involved, then those anxieties will be magnified. The current panic, though, focuses on games played not in public but in private, on the family PlayStation while mom or dad is upstairs. “We’ve gone through a cycle of moral panic that said, ‘Kids are playing it, we don’t know what it is,’” comments Jenkins. 

“Now we’re at the second danger point,” he continues, “when the medium begins to spread outward and attract more adults while the public still perceives it as mostly a children’s medium. Grand Theft Auto III was made, marketed, and rated for adults, but parents don’t know the game can be for adults.” So they buy the games for their kids without realizing what they’re getting. 

When the parents finally peek at the mayhem in the family den, the misunderstanding explodes. The result is wild rhetoric and ill-conceived laws that interfere not just with gamers’ fun but with an art form in its infancy. 

Jesse Walker is an associate editor of Reason.

For two young Berkeley documentarians, one of modern history’s most dramatic moments took on a new and unexpected reality when they set about collecting first-hand accounts of that day, four decades past, when Martin Luther King Jr. told the world he had a dream. 

“In school you just learn one story,” said Leslie Lewis, a 2002 Berkeley High graduate who filmed the interviews. “Everyone had a different perspective. The pieces didn’t all fit together. There were 250,000 stories that day.” 

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center of Oakland will present footage from interviews the pair videotaped last month of Bay Area residents who attended the rally where Dr. King gave his famous speech. 

For the young men, the project breathed new life into a tired tale. 

The King Center didn’t set out to make the film when planning this year’s tribute, initially figuring on a simple reception for the marchers. But when a board member told Center Executive Director Claire Greensfelder that she knew someone who had attended the March, Greensfelder decided it might be nice to get some quotes. 

She sent Daveed Diggs, who had taught writing and poetry workshops for the center, to do a couple of interviews. The talks went so well they decided to go ahead with the film, using a technology grant from SBC Pacific Bell and the filmmaking skills of Diggs’ BHS classmate Lewis, who had already composed several short films. 

Starting in early July, the pair, along with other King Center staff, sought out freedom march alumni using every tactic imaginable—they blanketed senior centers, churches and book stores with fliers, spoke at public events, and even posted an ad on craigslist. 

Their search netted a vibrant cross-section of 13 participants: whites and blacks, local natives and more recent transplants, political activists and civil rights novices. 

“This is a view of the march from a uniquely Bay Area perspective,” said Diggs, who conducted the interviews along with Oakland writer Tor Erickson. “We couldn’t get this type of diversity from any other place.” 

The interviews offered marked contrasts with the official school-taught history of the march. Several participants said they didn’t bother to stick around for the King speech, and many said they were more interested in the speech of John Lewis, then the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee. 

Others, mostly those active in the movement, said they hesitated to attend because the march seemed too mainstream. One marcher said he almost skipped out when he heard that Washington, D.C., workers were given the day off because he didn’t want to go to a protest endorsed by the mayor. 

“I was totally unconnected to the personal side of [the march],” Diggs said. “A lot of people thought they were wussing out by going to it.” 

No matter the background, every participant understood the march’s significance. “People were shocked at the amount of faces that showed up, said Diggs. “They knew the government would have to take notice of it.” 

For the documentarians, their summer project has left a lasting imprint. 

Diggs said that before he talked to the freedom marchers, he understood the march was important, but he had no notion of just how much and why. “Having seen all the documentaries and from what I was taught, I thought, yeah march on Washington…big deal. Now that I know the way the march has colored their lives, I’m much more interested in it.” 

Lewis agreed. “I can put myself in the middle of that march now,” he said. “It was interesting to hear someone talk about it in a real way. It brought it back down to earth.” 

The footage will be cut down to 35 minutes for the King event, but Lewis hopes to turn it into a full-length documentary. 

Diggs, a sophomore theater student at Brown, hopes to collect more oral histories, but he plans to include them in a performance piece rather than a film. 

The 40th Anniversary celebration of the freedom march will be held on Aug. 28 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at the Lakeshore Avenue Baptist church in Oakland. The event also features a performance by the St. Benedict’s Gospel choir and the recitation of Dr. King’s writings on peace by Bay Area-native, Danny Glover. 

Berkeley will mark the anniversary with a 7 p.m. ceremony at Civic Center Park reaffirming the 1963 Civil Rights Pledge. Organized byy Darryl Moore, the program will feature march attendee Carole Kennerly, the first African American woman elected to the city council, NAACP national board member Denisha DeLane, Alex Papian of the Berkkeley NAACP branch, and Sean Dugar of the NAACOP Youth Branch, who also conceived the event. 

“Attending the march in 1963 wqas inspirational and empowering,” Kennerly said. We must never forget what we accomplished, even as we must acknowledge how far we have to go.” 

Copies of the Civil Rights Pledge will be offered in several languages, including Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

The Berkeley Public Schools NEVER received a “Report Card” from a State Agency but a report on how we can continue to improve our schools. Either the reporter or headline writer for the Berkeley Daily Planet did not attend the meeting where this report was presented to the School Board, or they purposely are trying to inflame our community against our public schools. 

The School Board meeting on August 13 started with an introduction from one of the leaders of the State agency, FCMAT, explaining the purpose and value of their report. The Daily Planet, in it’s article about this meeting, even quoted FCMAT leader Joel Montero, when he “stressed that the report’s findings do not constitute ‘ a report card’ on the district,” thus contradicting the headline for the article that was written in the Weekend Edition, Aug. 15-18, 2003. 

Mr. Montero went on to say that there are many positive, exciting, and good things the Berkeley Schools are doing and that the purpose of the report was not to document these things but to analyze those things that we think still need attention. This School Board, and community, in turn, welcomes all the help we can get to continue to improve our schools. The operative description of FCMAT’s two year stay in Berkeley is “to help us continue to improve.” We all know we can do a better job educating ALL students, but so can every school district in this State. We all know that Berkeley needs to improve the operational and fiscal aspects of our system, and we have been working on this for the past two years, and with the help of the analysis given to us by FCMAT we will be improving that much faster. 

The bottom line is to improve the educational program for children. FCMAT, the community, the school system, and, in my opinion the school board, are 

working together towards this end and this was completely missed by the Berkeley Daily Planet in its weekend Edition of Aug. 15-18. 

Terry Doran is a Berkeley Unified School District Board Member.

After four months of trying to organize a union, Berkeley Bowl employees and community supporters will take their campaign to the streets Sunday with a rally in front of the store to demand that management agree to begin negotiations. 

Employee organizers say a large majority of their coworkers have signed union authorization cards and they’re calling for a card check agreement which would allow a third party to verify that a majority of the roughly 250 employees have asked the Oakland-based United Food and Commercial Workers Butchers’ Union (UFCW) Local 120 to represent them. 

“We have a strong majority and the workers are ready to begin negotiating,” said Jeremy Plague, one of the UFCW organizers working on the campaign.  

UFCW Local 120 has demanded a card check rather than a traditional union election because they say that there a number of ways that an election can be delayed and drawn out. A card check agreement would grant the union immediate recognition. 

“If we filed for an election it could be nine months to a year before we even sat down to start bargaining,” said Plague. “We want them to recognize the union now.” 

Store management has resisted the move, supporting instead a union election. “A card check would not give an accurate appraisal of how the employees feel,” said store manager Larry Evans. 

Plague disagrees. “I personally believe almost everyone is in favor of the union. Those who aren’t just haven’t been educated.” 

The drive originally started because employees had complaints about a number of issues including low wages, the inability to obtain health insurance and a management system they say is rife with favoritism. 

“People get overlooked for raises all the time,” said Eric Feezell, a produce clerk. “I’m on a long list of people who didn’t get a raise for months, as opposed to other employees who have gotten several raises in just the past couple of months.” 

Berkeley Bowl management has opposed the union by distributing flyers, holding anti-union meetings, and retaining Jackson Lewis, one of the largest and best-known law firms that represents management in labor disputes. 

Store officials have recently been caught twice in violation of federal labor law on anti-union activities. Berkeley Bowl General Manager Dan Kataoka posted a memo to all store employees stating the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that the Berkeley Bowl violated federal labor law by producing illegal statements from managers and by illegally spying on union activity. 

The unionization drive has won the support of many in the community and from public officials such as Mayor Tom Bates and City Councilmembers Margaret Breland and Kriss Worthington.  

Worthington, always a keen supporter of labor, stresses how important it is for community involvement during union campaigns.  

“It’s not a question of being for or against the owners,” said Worthington. “But when a company grows you develop different dynamics, you develop reasons why people want a union.” 

Several employees participating in the drive said they feel the same. “Berkeley Bowl has outgrown itself,” said Eric Feezell. “If it were the old store where everyone knew each other you could solve things without a union. But when you have 200 plus employees it’s a different story.” 

Cory Abshear, a checker at the store, says Berkeley Bowl still has the mom and pop reputation but that it’s not run that way. “They pretend to know all of our names but they don’t,” she said. 

Everyone involved in the organizing drive stresses that they haven’t called for a boycott and they encourage residents to continue shopping at the Berkeley Bowl, saying that they want the store to continue to be successful while demanding that the store respect the work they do to ensure that success. 

“They make so much money,” said Abshear. “They can afford to give their employees good health care and wages.”

Dear Mayor Bates and Council, 

We have been disappointed to learn that yet another neighborhood has become completely disillusioned with city staff and Berkeley politics around this senseless drive to install more transmitting antennas in residential neighborhoods. Virtually the same thing happened to our neighborhood when we fought Nextel’s attempts to install an array of twelve 500 watt antennae on the Oaks Theater.  

We were told many times by city staff and our own Councilmembers that neither we nor Nextel could lobby them in any way while the appeal was pending, in order not to prejudice them. Then, at the hearing, one of Nextel’s lawyers grandly thanked the Council for meetings he had had with them in the previous weeks. We were amazed to learn that Councilmembers had been secretly meeting with Nextel staff at the same time they were instructing us that they would not even talk to us, the citizens of Berkeley. We subsequently learned that Nextel had also hired another attorney who lives in the Berkeley hills (and has long been active in the old BCA politics and current campaigns) to lobby the mayor and council.  

We learned that Nextel had very cleverly used their corporate lawyer to lobby the more moderate members of the council, and at the same time used this local “BCA” lawyer to lobby the more radical members of the council! All this at the same time that Berkeley citizens were instructed not to even talk to anyone on the Council! You can imagine how disgusted our neighborhood group was when we learned this. 

We also experienced the inexplicable bias that city’s planning staff and attorneys have against Berkeley’s citizens. Staff would not accept a single issue that we raised as valid, while supporting and endorsing everything that Nextel’s hired guns presented. Only the testimony of Nextel’s hired “experts” was accepted as valid, even though we discredited many of them. We all worked on our own time for the good of our community while Nextel’s representatives said only what they were paid to say. We found that our written objections were basically emailed to Nextel, and Nextel’s replies were cut and pasted into the city’s documents as though they were responses done by city staff. (After this happened several times, we suggested that the city should bill city staff time on the dispute to Nextel, since our own city employees were essentially acting as employees of Nextel.) 

The mayor and Council can be sure that even more of their neighbors and constituents will develop a sense of betrayal towards the city’s politicians, and contempt towards city staff, unless things change. We for example were actually very moderate and supportive of our city staff and politicians until we had the temerity to question their blind support of Nextel. The whole process was quite an education for us and for our neighbors.  

It’s even more ridiculous that the Council and city staff alienate whole neighborhoods over the issue of antenna placement. As we have established many times, based on testimony from telecom companies’ own engineers, these transmitting arrays can be installed in the industrial section of the city or on highrises downtown, and can provide essentially the same service from those locations. After Nextel was denied the Oaks Theater, they simply built their array on a commercial building along San Pablo Ave in Albany, apart from any residential neighborhoods. This site provided them the same coverage to the Berkeley hills as the proposed array on the Oaks. Sprint can do the same, and find an acceptable site that is not in the middle of a residential neighborhood. 

Finally, we cannot resist noting that the increased capacity that these companies seek is not for basic cell phone use. It’s to provide capacity so that cell phones can be used for web surfing, video streaming, music, gaming, and all the other relatively useless junk the companies are trying to market now.  

Why city staff and our own City Council would side with this industry against the citizens of Berkeley remains a mystery to us.  

Connie and Kevin Sutton are Berkeley residents.

1990s Immigration Battles Resurface in California Recall 

The special election in California, in which voters will decide whether or not to vote out Gov. Gray Davis and replace him with a successor, has unexpectedly become a forum for a re-airing of the angry immigration disputes that rocked the state in the 1990s. 

Groups that want to restrict immigration are enthusiastic about the elections because they feel immigration issues are returning to the forefront. Once the dominant topic of political debate in the mid-1990s, when former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson was in office, immigration had faded into the background of California politics. 

“We’re certainly glad to see immigration become more of an issue in the recall; it is something that has a huge impact and affects the budget crisis,” says Craig Nelsen, director of Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, or FILE, based in Washington D.C. He told El Norte Digest that California can ill-afford the extra stress that undocumented immigrants put on public hospitals and schools. 

The National Review, a conservative newsmagazine, published an interview August 19 with former Gov. Wilson, now co-chair of the campaign of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wants to replace Davis. Wilson is known for promoting Proposition 187, which sought to cut off public services for undocumented immigrants. Schwarzenegger also voted for the 1994 proposition. Wilson told National Review: “187 would pass today, I think perhaps by a greater margin.” 

The Proposition 187 connection led Jorge Mújica, in an Aug. 15 commentary for bilingual weekly La Prensa-San Diego, to refer to Schwarzenegger as “Terminator 187.” 

N.Y. Latino neighborhood: Twice Struck by Blackouts 

While all of New York City suffered from the economic impacts of the blackout that affected parts of the east coast beginning Aug. 14, one heavily Latino part of Manhattan was particularly hard-hit. 

Washington Heights and Inwood, adjacent neighborhoods in an area that is the traditional home of the city’s large community of Dominican immigrants, are seeking financial relief from the state government of New York because they suffered from another crippling blackout in recent times, reports Spanish-language daily Hoy in its Aug. 19 edition. 

“No other community in the state of New York suffered more from the blackouts than Washington Heights and Inwood, which have suffered two major blackouts in less than four years,” said Adrian Espaillat, a Democrat and state assembly member from the area, according to Hoy. 

The neighborhood is “ground zero” for blackouts, State Senator Erik Schneiderman was quoted as saying. 

The politicians said they would ask for Gov. George Pataki to declare the neighborhood an “Empire Zone,” a special designation that would make businesses in the area eligible for cheap investment dollars and financial relief. New York authorities said the 18-hour summer 1999 blackout in Washington Heights was caused by worn out equipment in the electricity delivery system. 

Chicago-Area Boycott Against No-Match Letter Firings 

Latino groups and politicians organized a boycott against two Chicago-area companies that fired workers after receiving so-called no-match letters from the Social Security Administration, reports Chicago Spanish-language weekly La Raza. 

The no-match letters are sent out every year in an effort to inform of employers of possible irregularities with workers whose numbers don’t match those in federal records. Latinos are often affected by the no-match campaign because if they are undocumented, they often work with fake or stolen social security numbers. 

Latino rights advocates, however, say many Latinos fired as a result of no-match letters are legal workers that are the victims of bureaucratic mix-ups. 

Cook County Commissioner Robert Maldonado, who is one of several local politicians backing the boycott, says the legendary defender of migrant farm workers in California, Cesar Chavez, also used boycotts to defend workers’ rights: “It’s the only way to make them respect us,” Maldonado was quoted as saying in the Aug. 15 article. 

Latino groups have accused the government of stepping up the no-match campaign after the 9/11 terror attacks. They say the deluge of letters led to mass firing of workers, although the letters tell employers that they should not take immediate action and must first talk with workers and offer them an opportunity to set matters straight. 

The two Batavia, Illinois, companies being boycotted are Party Lite, which produces aromatic candles, and Suncast, which manufactures garden accessories, the paper said. Each has fired some 125 workers as a result of no-match letters. 

Latino Hip Hop: The Explosion of “Urban Regional” 

The fusion of Mexican regional music with hip hop has produced a new musical genre, “urban regional,” which has one foot on either side of the border, reports the Los Angeles Spanish-language daily La Opinión Aug. 19. 

While Latinos account for about 60 percent of all purchases of hip hop CDs in English, they have traditionally not entered this genre as musicians, according to the paper. 

The movement to combine traditional Latino sounds with hip hop, which has long been a strong force among young people in New York and Puerto Rico, is emerging from the underground scene and exploding in Los Angeles. 

Urban regional combines more traditional popular Mexican songs with hip hop beats. The popular genres that are used can include Mexican regional music, the country music of Mexico’s north, or more urbane romantic ballads that are also popular. 

The lyrics used are often a contemporary version of corridos, Mexican popular ballads that often deal with current events. The “urban regional” songs reflect on the lives of young Mexican Americans, and Latinos in general, often using slang and “Spanglish” to talk about love, politics and the struggle to survive in the less fortunate neighborhoods of the city. 

The trend, in a somewhat different form, has also spread to another mecca of Spanish-language music: Cuba. With rap quickly gaining popularity among Cuban youth, some experts think hip hop may now compete with the most popular of Cuban rhythms, salsa, which seemed to dominate the Cuban musical landscape until very recently, reports the Orlando bilingual weekly newspaper El Sentinel. 

Cubans in Seaworthy ‘51 Chevy Serenaded by Miami Radio 

Newspapers around the world followed the story of the Cubans that fitted out a ‘51 Chevrolet pickup truck as a seaworthy raft, and used it in an attempt to float away from their island to reach Florida, before being picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Now, a Miami Spanish-language radio station known for its on-air pranks has written a song in honor of the intrepid migrants, reports Miami Spanish-language daily El Nuevo Herald Aug. 20. 

Roughly translated, the song begins, “Since in Cuba the situation is so bad, that’s why I prepared the best truck at hand. A ‘51 Chevy was all I had, it’s the best ride I could find.” 

In parts of the song, which airs almost daily, the morning DJs at El Zol 95.7 FM also blast U.S. policy toward Cuba, including the so-called “wet-foot, dry foot” policy, which states that Cubans reaching U.S. soil are allowed to stay, while those caught at sea are turned back. 

Emilio Rodríguez, the show’s creative producer, wrote the song and he told El Nuevo Herald that he was angry because after repatriating the Cubans, the U.S. Coast guard sank the unique vessel. 

Elena Shore contributed to this report.

The moment California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante said he was tossing his hat in as a replacement candidate in the recall race, the buzz among blacks was that he was the guy who used the “N” word.  

Now that polls show Bustamante in a statistical dead heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Davis if the recall passes, the anxiety about him has become even more intense among many blacks.  

In a February 2001 speech to a group of black trade unionists, Bustamante purportedly slipped and uttered the dreaded “N” word. When a handful of blacks in the audience stormed out in protest, Bustamante backpedaled fast and swore it was a slip of the tongue. He did profuse mea culpas and furiously waved his credentials as a staunch defender of immigrant rights, affirmative action and multiculturalism.  

He hasn’t changed. Unveiling his $12 billion revenue and savings plan to solve California’s budget crisis, Bustamante struck a populist tax-the-rich theme, deliberately sending an “I’m one of you too” message to labor, blacks and Latinos—the core Democrats.  

Bustamante also vigorously opposes University of California regent Ward Connerly’s initiative on the Oct. 7 California ballot—Proposition 54, which critics say would bar all state agencies from collecting racial data. Bustamante comes off as a solidly liberal, even left-leaning Democrat when his record is stacked against that of the cautious, centrist Gov. Gray Davis, whom blacks overwhelmingly backed during both his gubernatorial bids.  

But the anxiety among blacks about Bustamante is less about his careless slip than about the resurfacing of political tensions between many blacks and Latinos. The tensions publicly emerged in 2001, when Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa promised to weld the city’s now-majority minorities into a powerhouse multiethnic coalition that would be a model for racial peace and progress in L.A. and the nation. Villaraigosa got strong support from Latinos, Asians and Jews. But his multiethnic pitch didn’t win over black voters, who voted overwhelmingly for the eventual winner—a white centrist, James Hahn.  

The huge surge in Latino numbers and voting power, and the real prospect of Bustamante’s becoming the first Latino governor in modern California history, has made blacks even more afraid they will be further marginalized in California politics.  

It’s a legitimate fear. There are more than 2 million Latino voters in the state, and that number will soar by the 2004 elections. In Los Angeles, Latinos, who were no more than 10 percent of the voters a decade ago, are nearly 25 percent of the voters today. The state legislature has a 24-member Democratic Latino caucus (which has endorsed Bustamante). By contrast, the number of blacks in the state legislature has dwindled to six, and the districts they represent are all in or near South Los Angeles. And, Latinos are the growing majority in their districts. There are now as many Latino Republicans in the state legislature as blacks.  

Latinos hold one out of the six California seats in Congress. Three out of California’s four black congresspersons represent mostly South Los Angeles districts where they face the same bleak political future as the black state legislators. Latinos make-up the statistical majority in their districts and will soon be the voting majority. Though the black congresspersons can’t be termed out, they can be voted out. If they don’t deliver the goods to their majority Latino constituents they could be dumped from office within the next decade.  

But despite Bustamante’s support among core Democrats, he has a couple of problems. He can’t beat Schwarzenegger with Latino and labor votes alone. He will need a near rock-solid majority among black voters. They make up about 12 percent of the state’s voters and are even more hardcore Democrats than labor or Latino voters. In 2000, nearly 85 percent of blacks voted for the Democrats, compared with about 70 percent of Latinos.  

In addition to blacks’ trepidations about Bustamante, nearly 15 percent of blacks in California did vote for Bush in 2000, the fourth biggest black vote total the Republicans got from any state. If black voters view Schwarzenegger as a socially liberal alternative to the state’s diehard rightist Republicans, and if he makes a real effort to court them, it could spell peril for Bustamante.  

In informal surveys, blacks don’t express the reflexive hostility to Schwarzenegger as they do to other Republicans. But they will watch closely what he says and does about Connerly’s Prop. 54 race initiative. So far, Schwarzenegger has been as mute on that as on other crucial issues. If Davis continues his downward plunge in the polls, Bustamante’s stock will rise even higher among Democrats. That would include black Democrats too, if only it weren’t for that “N” word.  

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and the author of “The Crisis in Black and Black” from Middle Passage Press.

Berkeley police say they are closing in on the man they believe severely injured fellow officer Ben Cardoza in a hit and run accident last week. 

“We have a good idea as to the identity of the suspect,” said BPD Police spokesperson Mary Kusmiss. She refused to divulge his name because of an ongoing investigation. 

Meanwhile, the department has announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the driver. The money is being offered jointly by the city and the Police Officers’ Association. 

The bloodstained white 1997 Chevrolet Caprice believed to be the hit-and-run vehicle was found early Friday morning after an anonymous tip led officers to the garage of a Hercules home. 

Police arrested an Oakland man at the house for helping to hide the vehicle, but said 35-year-old Kevin Lamont was not the driver, nor did he live at the house. 

Police inspected the car, finding bloodstains on the hood and dents which they believed were evidence that it struck Cardoza. 

Cardoza remains a patient at Alta Bates Medical Center, recovering from a compound fracture in his right leg, three broken bones in his right foot, and a gash on the inside of his right arm from his wrist to his elbow. 

“His spirits are good,” said Kusmiss, who visited him Monday. 

A five-year veteran of the force, Cardoza, 26, was riding his police motorcycle westbound on Ashby Avenue at Wheeler Street in response to a reported traffic accident when he was struck by a car heading south. 

Cardoza and his motorcycle were thrown an estimated 40-50 feet before ricocheting off a parked car and another oncoming car, according to BPD accounts of the accident.

“College Students Pay More and Get Less,” the newspaper headlines scream. I have discovered just how true this statement is. 

Back in January my friend Corrie and I applied to the Masters of Fine Arts program at San Francisco State University. 

The first indication that things might not go smoothly was when we were notified that our undergraduate transcripts had not arrived with our applications. We panicked. We had each paid to have the transcripts sent directly to the registrar’s office. It’s been 30 years since I attended college and I was worried that proof I had once been a student no longer existed. 

But when I called my alma mater I was assured that the transcripts had been sent. I called San Francisco State University and after going in circles a few times on the telephone tree I was told that “…your transcript is probably here somewhere. We’ll look around and if you don’t hear from us in a week or two then everything is okay.” 

No, I thought, everything is not okay. This is not what I expected to hear from the graduate school’s dean’s office. Corrie got a similar response.  

They must have found our transcripts because we didn’t hear from them again until we were accepted. More confusion set in. We received a long e-mail letter from the president of SFSU telling us that tuition fees had been raised. 

Then we got a packet of information in the mail with a list of classes and details on program requirements. It wasn’t clear that the course requirements and the classes available matched up but we thought we’d find out more when we attended graduate school orientation.  

Orientation took place last week in a room too small for the number of new graduate students. 

I had naively thought the registrar’s office would know how many people they had accepted and therefore provide enough chairs. A 30-page handbook was distributed, but there weren’t enough copies to go around. 

Those of us without a handbook were told we could download it from the Internet on our home computers or buy a copy at the bookstore for $3. Maybe, I thought, the current gubernatorial recall does have merit.  

Without a chair or the hand-outs, it was hard to follow the accompanying slide show. But since most of the information dealt with how to graduate on time, something I won’t be doing for at least three years, it seemed that I could worry about graduation later. After all, classes haven’t even started yet. 

We headed to the campus bookstore to buy our required textbooks but the cash register line was too long and we decided to go back another time. 

Then we went to the Student Services building to get our identification cards. That line was even longer. 

We hiked back to Corrie’s car which was parked many miles away. I hadn’t expected there to be enough parking spaces and there weren’t.  

“Jeez,” said Corrie as we barreled down 19th Avenue. “I thought they’d at least provide us with food at orientation, not to mention a seat and a handbook.”  

I looked over at Corrie and noticed for the first time what she was wearing. I had dressed for fog but Corrie was attired in real coed garb—sandals, a tank top with skinny bra straps showing underneath, and bell bottom pants that dragged on the ground. Her very flat belly was exposed where her shirt bottom and pant tops were supposed to meet.  

I looked down at my own Hush Puppy-like shoes. I had on pants that could only be described as “floods” and my button-down cardigan sweater suddenly appeared rather matronly. 

For the first time I had to wonder about what I had gotten myself into. Forget budget cuts, long lines, and missing handbooks. What I need to get through graduate school isn’t necessarily the right classes or a chair, but a smooth stomach and a better looking wardrobe.

California Gov. Gray Davis, in a surprise move, recently promised to approve greater legal rights for same-sex couples. While it is too soon to tell how this bold action will affect Davis’ chances in the recall election, governments and politicians around the world are finding it to their advantage to champion lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights.  

Leaders of formerly totalitarian central and Eastern European regimes are striking down discriminatory laws against minorities and gays. In most cases, these countries must get rid of anti-sodomy and other persecutory laws in order to qualify for and enjoy the economic and political benefits of membership in the European Union.  

Croatia and Slovenia are taking matters a step further and creating laws that guarantee rights for same-sex couples. On July 25 the Croatian government became the latest country to offer legal and economic rights for homosexual couples on a national level.  

In Romania, however, politicians still have a hard time going public with their support for gay rights. With its application into the European Union pending, Romania repealed an anti-sodomy law it enforced until a year ago, but that’s as far as it’s willing to go.  

“Every time an election came around, the issue of repealing the sodomy law was postponed,” says Sara Moore, program associate for Eastern Europe/Central Asia at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in San Francisco. “In the West, LGBT rights can be debated openly. In many other countries, a liberal candidate will be more discreet in their handling of their openness to LGBT issues and is more likely to sneak it in later.”  

In Brazil, on the other hand, defending gay rights has become part of a larger movement to strengthen democracy and expand the rights of people of color and of mixed-race citizens. The government has long confronted prejudices in the multiracial and predominantly Catholic society, calling on constituencies like women and homosexuals to project strong voices on controversial issues such as AIDS. The Brazilian government is leading the charge in an extensive HIV-prevention campaign that uses openly gay spokespersons. Brazilians have elected transgender governors, mayors and lawmakers.  

In Mexico, Patria Jimenez, the first openly homosexual member of Mexico’s legislature, campaigned on a platform of greater HIV prevention and LGBT and human rights when she was elected in 1997. Her victory marked a turning point for Mexico—it weakened the stronghold of the ruling conservative National Action Party and firmly placed the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution’s agenda on the map. She and her party have pushed for AIDS prevention legislation previously stymied by the pervasive Catholic Church influence in government.  

Indeed, in Mexico, LGBT rights quickly became integral to a much larger movement against authoritarian rule. Today, a handful of openly gay members serve in the Mexican congress or are mayors or governors of Mexican states. Little is made of their sexual orientation, and they are seen mostly as liberal symbols of democracy.  

Last April, Mexico also became just the second Latin American country in addition to Ecuador to pass a national anti-discrimination law protecting sexual orientation. Today, single men are allowed to adopt children. The law is not portrayed as a way to further the rights of gay men, but rather as a way for children to have the fundamental right to a family.  

Traditionally conservative Singapore, too, is making a complete about-face. In June, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong gave the nod for gays to serve in government positions. Not too long ago, LGBTs were regularly rounded up in gay bar raids and their names and faces were published in the local newspaper to incur public humiliation. Today, the country’s growing gay-friendly tourist industry is reaping substantial returns and the government hopes to attract more gay foreign business people as well as those who left for freedoms of the West to boost the country’s lagging economy.  

It is still unclear how Singapore will reconcile its newfound acceptance of LGBTs with decades of censorship and discriminatory practices. Gay rights activists are also quick to point out that there is still an anti-sodomy law on the books that could be enforced at any time, especially if gays were to become overtly political.  

Still, in their effort to obtain greater economic and political gains, politicians in many countries are finding that pushing for gay rights can be a valuable, albeit self-serving, tool.  

Pueng Vongs is the editor of ncmonline.com, an association of over 600 ethnic media organizations founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service and members of ethnic media.

The headline of the Rio de Janeiro daily Jornal do Brasil put it most starkly: “Brazilian Peace Hero Dies in Iraq Attack.” 

The death in Baghdad of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the 55-year-old United Nations special representative in Iraq, has convulsed Brazil. 

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of national mourning. Every flag in the country was lowered to half-mast; legislative sessions in Brasilia, the capital, were cancelled and devoted to commemorating his legacy. 

Beneath the grief, though, a raw nerve has been struck. Brazilians were exceedingly proud of Vieira De Mello’s stature as a peacemaker. He was widely seen as the favorite to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. Secretary General. His death in Iraq, as a result of a war and an occupation that much of the Brazilian population and its political leadership opposed, was treated as a cruel irony. 

Throughout the build-up to the Iraq war, Brazil’s government never deviated from its position that any action against Iraq should first be approved by the United Nations. The death of the star diplomat caused Brazil to revisit its role as a critic of the U.S.-led intervention. 

In an interview with Reuters, governing Worker’s Party foreign affairs chief Paulo Delgado praised Vieira de Mello for standing up to the United States: “He took a firm position with the United States, demanding that they re-establish water and electricity in Iraq.” 

In a deliberate snub of U.S. occupation forces, President Lula made a series of telephone calls and hastily dispatched a Brazilian Air Force jet so that Vieira de Mello’s body did not have to be transported out of Iraq on a U.S. military aircraft. 

Brazil’s media republished lengthy interviews in which Vieira de Mello evocatively described the resentment welling up in the Iraqi population. He openly pushed for full Iraqi control of the country by 2004, a quicker training of an all-Iraqi police force and referred to the occupation as “humiliating” for Iraqis. 

In a turn of phrase that was repeated endlessly by Brazilian media, Vieira de Mello asked an interviewer to imagine what it would be like if U.S. tanks were rumbling through Rio: “I wouldn’t like to see tanks in Copacabana,” he said, referring to one of the city’s famous beach neighborhoods. 

He also was frank in describing his fear of being a target. Mentioning the tongue-in-cheek Brazilian saying that claims “God is Brazilian,” Vieira de Mello told the Jornal do Brasil that he hoped the saying meant God would offer him special protection. 

The conservative Estado newspaper noted that the U.S. military was responsible for providing security at the U.N. headquarters. Only days before the attack, the paper noted, Vieira de Mello personally complained to United Nations authorities that the security at the building seemed inadequate. 

The same newspaper, in a blistering Aug. 21 editorial, called the U.S. occupation of Iraq a “dead-end alley” and dubbed the entire Iraq campaign a “disastrous adventure” that had only succeeded in transforming Iraq “into a sort of Mecca for Islamic terrorism.” 

Germana De LaMare, columnist for the Rio de Janeiro daily O Dia, argued that the United Nations should now do more to show itself to be independent of U.S. interests. “The attack that took the life of one of our best diplomats shows that the situation in Iraq is becoming more complex, instead of settling down. ... The United Nations should begin to assume a more democratic profile, freer of the interests of rich nations.” 

That is exactly what may happen, since Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, has long lobbied for a permanent seat on an expanded, more inclusive U.N. Security Council, touting itself as the logical representative from Latin America, says Jaroslav Pribyl, editor of the San Diego, Calif.-based monthly Brazilian Pacific Times. 

Vieira de Mello’s death comes at a special moment for Brazil’s engagement with the outside world, he says. 

Brazil is shedding its recent past of military dictatorships, successfully consolidating its democracy and trying to project itself as a different kind of world power, one committed to a strong role for the United Nations and other multilateral bodies, as well as human rights and fair trade. 

Noting Brazil had recently obtained France and Britain’s support for its U.N. Security Council bid, Pribyl says: “It’s about time Brazil got that seat. I think Brazil has good momentum in establishing foreign policy influence, and Vieira de Mello’s example will strengthen its resolve.” 

Marcelo Ballve is an editor at PNS. He grew up in Latin America and has lived in Brazil.

The deadly bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad last week has spurred Arab commentators to gauge Iraq’s future with a combination of fear and cynicism. Many note bitterly that a war ostensibly against terrorism has in fact transformed Iraq into fertile ground for terror groups. 

“All Arab governments immediately condemned the U.N. bombing,” says Rami Khouri, editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beruit, Lebanon. But Arab public opinion was more revealing, Khouri says, ranging from “This is a terrible crime, but no surprise,” to the darker, “It was inevitable, given what the United States did with its aggressive army.” 

“There’s a ‘we told you so’ feeling among Arabs,” Khouri says. “We told you this would open up a Pandora’s Box of violence and instability in the region.” 

Columnist Jihad Al Khazen echoed the sentiment in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper. “The U.S. is now paying in Iraq the price for the lies it made up to justify the war,” he wrote. “U.S. presence in Iraq is like the story in the Torah of a house built on sand.” 

But Al Khazen concludes, “I am still convinced that Saddam Hussein’s regime could not have been overthrown had it not been for the American attack, and any future regime, except for a civil war, would be better... Damn that person who caused all this, that coward who wasted Iraq’s independence and ran away.” 

Jalal Ghazi translates and monitors Arab media for the “Mosaic News” program of WorldLink TV in San Francisco. He says the U.N. bombing and other recent attacks point to the unintended consequences of the U.S.-led invasion. 

“Before the occupation of Iraq, there was much state terror, but no active terrorist organizations in the country,” Ghazi says. “Now you can add Iraq to the list of areas of the world where terrorism flourishes.” 

Ghazi says that a whole host of groups, foreign and indigenous, are now attacking U.S. troops in Iraq. Rami Khouri agrees, saying, “Iraq has become to America what Afghanistan was to the Russians—an arena for anyone around the world who wants to fight it.” 

U.S. occupation of Iraq has brought two formerly bitter enemies—the supporters of Osama bin Laden and those of Saddam Hussein—together, Ghazi says. “They now have a common objective: the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Ironically, this is what bin Laden called upon his supporters to do before the start of the war.” 

The possibility that the U.N. bombing and the growing violence could hasten a U.S. withdrawal worries Ghazi. “I think a civil war could develop. Already, Shia Arabs in Iraq are being criticized by some Arab commentators because they’re not supporting the resistance.” 

Halim Al Aaraji, writing in Al Hayat, concurs, noting on Aug. 21, “The majority of Iraqis believe that if the Americans were to immediately withdraw, Iraq would head straight into disaster ... and pave the way for a potentially destructive civil war.” 

An Aug. 21 editorial in the Arab News, an English-language daily in Saudi Arabia, takes a different view. The U.N. attack will backfire on the perpetrators, which it guesses are Hussein loyalists upset at recent U.N. moves perceived as supportive of U.S. occupation. 

“When the history of the last stand of the Baath Party diehards comes to be written,” the paper writes, “the attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad will almost certainly be seen as their major mistake.” 

The editorial compares the attack to a soccer team foolishly kicking a ball into its own goal and concludes, “George W. Bush’s campaign to involve more countries in suppressing Baathist resistance in Iraq has probably just become a whole lot easier.” 

Nidal Ibrahim edits and publishes Arab American Business Magazine from Los Angeles, Calif. He says that while most Arab Americans have long recognized that the United States is involved in a guerrilla war in Iraq, “the U.N. (bombing) was something altogether unexpected.” 

Ibrahim says he’s spoken to Iraqi Americans who have traveled to Baghdad since Saddam’s regime ended. They’ve reported “a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction with the U.S.” among local Iraqis. 

It’s a sentiment common to Arab Americans, Ibrahim says. Whether accurate or not, he says, the feeling among many Arab Americans is that the United States has not prioritized the rebuilding of Iraq to benefit Iraqis, and that the Bush administration has squandered initial gratitude to U.S. forces for toppling Saddam. 

“It’s incredibly frustrating to sit here and watch it happen,” Ibrahim says. 

Khouri, the editor in Beruit, says he recognizes and is greatly saddened by a “degenerative situation” in Iraq all too common to the Arab world. “It’s more and more violence against more and more targets. The U.N. people are about as pure and noble as you can get.” 

Brian Shott, an editor at PNS, talked to Arab American commentators in California and the Middle East.

Berserkeley. I hate that word, the easy epithet with which benighted out-of-towners reduce our rich and varied local life—above all, our intense, grass-roots activism—to the antics of our most outlandish residents. If only there was somebody whose job it was to defend us against such slurs.  

Actually, there is: Barbara Hillman, the president of the Berkeley Visitors and Convention Bureau. 

As our city’s semi-official meeter and greeter, Hillman often finds herself politely nudging out-of-towners’ misconceptions closer to reality, albeit a reality envisioned by a seasoned hospitality professional.  

You might think that those in most need of a reality check would be travellers from abroad. But according to Hillman, it’s other Americans who are most likely to imagine that Berkeley is a place “where all of us walk around in tie-dye and smoke pot.” 

There was the man from Oregon who wanted to know “when the naked people came out.” And the travel writer from the Kansas City Star who went up to campus, saw people standing together and began relishing the thought that he had stumbled onto a demonstration—only to disappointedly discover that the crowd was waiting in line for theater tickets. 

Hillman also remembers the Arizona talk show host who did a live interview with her in the early 90s, when then-Berkeley City Manager Michael Brown had just been short-listed for the same position in Tucson. “He had me on hold,” Hillman says, “so while people were calling in, I could hear. People were saying, ‘Oh my God—somebody from Berkeley’s coming here.’ ‘So tell us,’ he said, ‘what are we going to expect if Michael Brown is hired.’ I said, ‘I really think you’re going to be disappointed. Because he wears a suit and tie to work.’” Replied her non-plussed caller: “He does?”  

Not that Hillman presents Berkeley as Anywhere, U.S.A. Her job, after all, is to let outsiders know that Berkeley is a special place—but not necessarily in the way they think. 

“We tell people that the Free Speech Movement is a very important part of Berkeley’s history. Telegraph Avenue and People’s Park are things that we will always have and be proud of. But Berkeley has evolved into a different place than it was thirty years ago.”  

How it’s evolved is something Hillman herself had to learn, even though she grew up a mere twenty minutes away in San Leandro. Indeed, when she was invited to be the founding president of Berkeley’s Convention and Visitors Bureau in 1992, Hillman initially turned down the offer.  

“I said, ‘What’s in Berkeley besides a University?’ Her attitude changed after she was persuaded to set aside her doubts long enough to come into town from Pleasanton, where she then worked and still lives, and meet with representatives of the City, the Chamber of Commerce and the local hotel industry. “I came in and chatted with them, and then I drove around, and I went: ‘Oh my gosh—this is like a gold mine sitting here that so many people don’t know about.’ And I took the job.” 

Eleven years later, she’s still a believer. “When you stop and think about the amount and quality of things that there are to do here in Berkeley, it’s phenomenal, especially for the size of the community. 

“There’s Tilden Park, the little quaint neighborhood shopping areas, the international market place around lower University and San Pablo. You can go to a shopping mall in Walnut Creek or Pleasanton, but Berkeley is just different. 

“We have all these independent bookstores; we have antique stores; we have artisan studios. Berkeley also has some of the best restaurants and cultural activities around”—attractions that, Hillman says, jibe with the current trend in cultural tourism.  

The Convention and Visitors Bureau’s mission is to promote Berkeley as a desirable destination for meeting attendees, known in the trade as “conventioners,” and leisure travelers. Its staff of three and $250,000 budget are supported by 1% of the 12% hotel tax paid by visitors staying at our lodging facilities. The other 11 percent goes into the City’s General Fund.  

Some readers may wonder why Berkeley needs to be promoted as a tourist destination at all. One reason is that bringing paying guests to town bolsters the local economy and culture. This year the hotel tax contributed over $2 million to the General Fund. 

And, Hillman says, “If we didn’t have the these people coming in and spending money, we wouldn’t have the Rep and the Symphony, because they can’t rely on just the locals’ business.”  

Each month about 500 people come into the Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Center Street office; about 100 call on the phone. Ninety percent of the walk-ins are first-time visitors to Berkeley. “It’s amazing what people ask you,” says Hillman.  

“They walk in with their luggage and say, ‘We just arrived, and we need a hotel.’ We say: ‘But it’s graduation week! There’s nothing!’ We help them find something—it could be out in Walnut Creek.” Other requests are easier to fill.  

“I just had a call from a woman today who was coming on Amtrak from Sacramento. She wanted to know what’s within walking distance of the station. I said: ‘It’s perfect. You’ve got Fourth Street. You can spend the afternoon shopping there and eating.’”  

The Bureau also helps individuals from out of town who need to organize major events from a distance. “A woman calls from New York and says, ‘My son’s graduating, and I have to have this party set before I come out in May.’ We got her into Café de la Paz. ‘My son is getting married; he and his fiancé go to UC Berkeley; but I’m in Virginia.’ We send them information about hotels; we mail them maps for all the guests and directions to the reception at the Brazil Room. When you stop and think, who else would help them with those kinds of things?”  

Then there are the “conventioners.” Berkeley hosts as many as 120 conferences in a year. Part of Hillman’s job is convincing meeting planners that the town would be a good place for their groups to convene. She briefs them about local facilities, lodgings, restaurants and diversions. 

When the prospective visitors are from somewhere east of the Mississippi, a basic geography lesson is often in order. “You get back past the Midwest,” Hillman says, “and people don’t realize how big California is. You say you’re in the East Bay, and they say, ‘The East Bay of what?’  

Once she was setting up the Berkeley booth at a travel industry trade show in Washington, D.C., when a woman came up, offered her business card and said: “I’m really interested in bringing my group and meeting. I need to be an hour from L.A.” 

Hillman replied, “By air, right?” 

“Oh no, no, no—within driving range,” said the woman. 

Pointing to a six-feet-by-four-feet photo of the Campanile silhouetted against the Bay, Hillman said: “See this? That’s San Francisco. We’re right across the Bay from that.” 

“No shit!” said the would-be visitor.  

Because her staff is tiny—Berkeley has one of the smallest Convention and Visitors Bureaus in Northern California—Hillman works closely with Conference Services at UC.  

“The University holds national and international conferences. Those people bring their spouses. Those spouses are wondering, what is there for me to do? I don’t want those people getting on BART and going to San Francisco on the first day. I want them to see that there’s enough to do here, whether it’s the shopping, Tilden, the restaurants, or taking in a show—and then going into San Francisco on BART.”  

The Bureau also collaborates with the Cal Athletic Department. “When a football game’s coming in,” says Hillman, “we usually send a letter and a packet of information to people out of the area—to the alumni association and the football team--welcoming them to Berkeley: ‘We understand you’re going to be playing the Bears here. If you need help with transportation or accommodations, let us know.’”  

The Colorado State University Alumni Relations Office was looking for a place where 400 Colorado Boosters could have a tailgate party before the Cal football game on Sept. 6. With her assistance, the Colorado fans are going to party at the Pyramid Brewery and then bus up to Memorial Stadium.  

“We are just damned lucky to have the University,” says Hillman. “Right after Sept. 11, San Francisco—the number one tourist destination in the country—was dead. The next week was the Cal football game against Oregon. Our hotels were full, because people could drive down, or if they did fly, it was only an hour or an hour and a half max. The weekend after that was the Washington State game. We were full again. Other cities weren’t.”  

But even the University’s draw can’t compensate for the blows the travel industry has recently sustained. Hillman ticked them off to me: Sept. 11, SARS, the ailing U.S. economy. Plus an (almost) only-in Berkeley crisis: the City Council’s opposition to the war in Afghanistan. As that gesture indicates, the town has retained its outspoken liberal character, a fact that can create challenges for its ambassadors at the Convention and Visitors Bureau.  

“I lost an employee over that [vote],” says Hillman. The Bureau was deluged with angry, often venomous messages. “’Why don’t you guys move to Afghanistan?’ ‘Go live with those pigs!’ It was so personal,” says Hillman.  

“’We come down from Sacramento; we take the train; we go to the Big Game; we eat here and there. We’re not coming anymore.’ Or, ‘There’s a group of us women who come once a month. We shop in Berkeley, and we have lunch. We’re not coming anymore.’ And I said: ‘You know, I’m really sorry that you feel this way. I hope you change your minds. You’re welcome to give your opinion, and I’ll pass it on.’”  

In fiscal year 2003, the hotel tax was down about a million dollars from the previous year. “That means less people are staying here and patronizing our businesses,” Hillman says. 

As befits her job description, Hillman looks on the bright side. She told me about the expanded visitors guide that will be out in January 2004, and the 90 travel writers from around the country who came to Berkeley last year at the invitation of the new East Bay Travel Consortium. 

At my request, she also offered some suggestions for making Berkeley more visitor-friendly: better public transportation, better visitor signage throughout the city—”When you’re going up University, you need signs that say “Telegraph” and “Gourmet Ghetto”—and more public restrooms. “You don’t see ‘For Patrons Only’ signs in any other cities.” The new public restroom in the Center Street Garage helps, but not enough.  

I leave Hillman’s office clutching the Bureau’s stylish packet of tourist information. The new brochure about the International Marketplace particularly whets my appetite; I plan to play tourist myself in the near future. In the meantime, I’m glad that we have Barbara Hillman and her staff to welcome people to town and guide them to its wonders. 

Berkeley’s Convention and Visitors Bureau has offices at 2015 Center Street (telephone 510-549-7040) and a web site at www.visitberkeley.com.

Over one hundred perfectly normal folks came out for the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society’s Annual Plant Show and sale Sunday, Aug. 24 at the UC Botanical Garden. 

Held during an uncommonly beautiful and sunny summer day, attendees from all over the Bay Area viewed exotic, prize-winning botanical specimens, won numerous raffle prizes and had the opportunity to purchase rare carnivorous plants.  

“It was fabulous,” said Shannan Hobbs, a volunteer propagator at the Botanical Garden. “I saw some things here that I’ve never seen before.” 

Indicating a tall and spindly plant with a head of foliage that could have been designed by Dr. Seuss, Hobbs proudly identified her prized purchase of the day. “I got a byblis here, one called a Rainbow plant.” 

The Rainbow plant will join 40 other carnivorous plants in Hobbs’s Oakland backyard. 

“We have a very mild climate, also Oakland water can be used directly because it’s very, very low particulate water. I filter it with a Brita filter but that’s not getting out much,” said Hobbs. “They’re a little fussier than some plants, but our climate is so mild a lot of them can grow here, especially the sarracenias [pitcher plants]. A lot of people don’t know how well they do here.” 

Hobbs first became enchanted with carnivorous plants as a teaching docent at the Botanical Gardens. “Not only do they have good novelty value, but they’re a great entree for teaching young people about plants. You can show them all these other adaptations that plants make. It’s a really good way to introduce them to other plants, subtler plants.” 

Some of the flesh-eating plants Hobbs propagates will be for sale at the Botanical Garden’s biannual Fall Plant Sale on Sunday, Sept. 28, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. 

Selma Rockett of North Oakland attended the show with her sister Barbara Alperen, who’s visiting from the Virgin Islands.  

“My sister has beautiful gardens,” said Rockett. “I thought that she would enjoy this and the [plants] are fascinating.” 

Rockett left with several carnivorous plants, a first for her own garden. 

Marvin Quick of Albany came with his adult daughter, Stephanie Quick. 

“My wife Doris has been collecting carnivorous planets for over ten years,” said father Quick. “We’ve got a lot … well, I should say we don’t have a lot compared to what most people have… we’ve got the standard backyard fare, but if you looked in our backyard you’d say, ‘Where did all these strange plants come from?’ But since we don’t have an actual hot house, there’re some things she can’t grow.” 

Rather than collecting carnivorous plants, daughter Stephanie Quick collects caudiciform succulents. 

“It’s another weird plant, like the baobab tree—that would be the most famous one. They can go dormant and then look like a gnarly stick so you get people saying, ‘Is that thing alive?’” she said, laughing.  

“It’s always fun to see people who are enthusiastic about stuff,” her father said. “You get a different sort of a person, and they’re much more active. You see guys that barely look like they’re out of their teenage years and they’ll have all these plants. They did it not because they had huge amounts of money but because they were able to figure out how to get a small plant and grow it.” 

One of those youngsters was Nick Johnson, a 14-year-old freshman entering Skyline High School. Johnson purchased several highly prized carnivorous plants during the Society’s rare plant auction. He currently cultivates over 100 different carnivorous plants, some in his bedroom and others outside in his backyard bog. 

“I really liked them but I didn’t really get into them until about two years ago when I found Peter D’Amato’s book, “Savage Garden.” I read that a couple hundred times and then I went up to his nursery in Sebastopol and it just kicked off from there.”  

With his mother’s approval Johnson has created a large bog in their Montclair backyard.  

“They’re beautiful, magnificent plants and Nick has been teaching me so much. I learn from him, constantly. It’s a wonderful thing for a mother to be sharing with her son,” she said.  

“He’s always had passions and this is his latest passion. He’s learning so much. He investigated how to build a bog garden on his own. He put the whole thing together and he truly made it on his own.” 

“I’m definitely interested in botany. It’s really rewarding seeing how the plants grow,” said the younger Johnson. “I want to do something [with plants] in my career. If I’m not working actually with them all the time, maybe something on the side.”  

Darryl Price of North Oakland brought his daughter Jessica to see the plants. They went home with two new insect-eating plants for their household.  

“I’ve been interested in carnivorous plants since I was a teenager,” said father Price. “I’ve had pitcher plants and Venus flytraps but I’ve never had these. This is in the Sundew family and this one is a bladder plant.” 

Jessica, who attends St. Martin de Porres Junior High School was not impressed. 

“They’re nasty,” she said. “They’re trapping spiders and ants and flies and bees. I really don’t like them. I like flowers.”  

Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society maintains a presence on the web at http://www.bacps.org. 

The UC Botanical Garden holds in annual Fall Plant Sale from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28.  

For more information, call the Garden at 643-2755 or visit them on the web at http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/.

Sometimes controversial U.C. anthropology professor John Ozu Ogbu suffered a fatal heart attack after undergoing back surgery last week. He was 64. 

Known for his work on how race and ethnic differences impact economic and academic achievement, Ogbu first caused controversy in 1986 with the release of a study he co-authored that concluded that African-American students at a Washington, D.C. high school didn’t live up to their academic potential for fear of being accused of “acting white.” 

His most recent study, published this year, was on why black students at an affluent Shaker Heights, Ohio high school performed less well than their white counterparts. Ogbu concluded that the black students’ own cultural attitudes hindered academic achievement. 

Central to Ogbu’s work was the way he classified minorities into “voluntary” and “involuntary” groups. He identified voluntary minorities as having come to a new environment with their collective identity intact. 

Born in Nigeria, Ogbu believed that African Americans were involuntary minorities because they formed their identity under the oppression of the dominant society after arriving in America.  

The author of several books, Ogbu received the Society for Applied Anthropology’s Margaret Mead Award. In 1997 a special edition of “Anthropology and Education Quarterly” was devoted to Ogbu’s theories. 

Ogbu is survived by his wife Marcellina, four daughters and a son. He will be buried in Nigeria next month. A memorial service is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7 at the First Presbyterian Church, 27th and Broadway in Oakland.  

—Paul Kilduff

Most of the 220 Berkeley teachers—about a third of the total faculty—handed pink slips in March will be back in their classrooms when school opens Wednesday, administration officials said. 

“The numbers are great,” said district spokesman Mark Coplan. Only eight of the 220 teachers remain without jobs. 

For the second straight year, the board—operating under state mandate—had to notify teachers whose salaries the district couldn’t guarantee for the following year. 

Statewide about 10,000 teachers were given notice last March when the California Legislature delayed passage of the state budget, leaving school districts across the state unable to budget for teaching positions because they didn’t know how much money they would have at their disposal. 

The layoff notices damaged morale and sent some Berkeley teachers into open rebellion. At Washington Elementary School, where 13 of 19 teachers were pink-slipped, faculty posted pink signs on their windows on which they wrote “pink slipped teacher.” 

Now, according to a school administrator, all of the teachers are back. 

Union officials said the notices were unnecessary because the actual number of job cuts were in line with teachers retiring or leaving the district.  

“People are happy to have their jobs back, but it affected morale throughout the spring when teachers were preparing for exams,” said union leader Barry Fike. 

Not all of the teachers asked back decided to return. Coplan could not provide exact figures, but said some teachers had already accepted jobs in other districts or left the profession. 

Berkeley schools will employ about fifty fewer teachers this year, reflecting a steady drop in enrollment—about 500 students in the past two years, according to Coplan. 

For most students, fewer teachers won’t mean larger classes, but ninth-graders will see a dramatic increase. 

The district pulled out of a federally subsidized program this year that aimed to limit class size to no more than 20. Budget shortfalls left the district unable to pay for its share of the program, Coplan said. 

Ninth grade classes should now average about 30 students per classroom. 

Class overcrowding remains an issue throughout the high school, said incoming principal Jim Slemp. “In some classrooms it will be impossible for every kid in class to have a desk,” he said.